[sustran] Re: Chinese tax for big cars

[Zvi Leve]

If I am not mistaken, Shanghai is the only city in China which 
/prohibits vehicles with engine sizes smaller than 1.6 litres/. This 
policy may have been conceived in order to favour locally produced cars 
(VW makes a Jetta type model with mid-sized engines in Shanghai), but it 
has also led to another perhaps unintended consequence: there are no 
small cars in Shanghai, hence there are also far fewer vehicles than one 
would expect for a city of this size!

Of course the number of scooters and motorcycles is still growing 
rapidly, as it is everywhere else, but things could be worse!

Zvi

Todd Alexander Litman wrote:

>
> Help what? Taxes on luxury cars may be justified on equity grounds (to 
> "soak the rich"), but a strategy that simply increases average fuel 
> economy will reduce the per-mile cost of driving, which tends to 
> increase annual mileage per vehicle, offsetting some of the energy 
> savings and increasing most other transportation problems including 
> congestion, accidents, risk to non-drivers, road and parking facility 
> costs, sprawl, and many types of pollution. See "Efficient Vehicles 
> Versus Efficient Transportation" ( http://www.vtpi.org/cafe.pdf ).
>
> I've seen environmentalists devote excessive effort to one or two 
> energy conservation strategies, such as CAFE standards and Feebates, 
> while overlooking far more effective and beneficial strategies such as 
> road and parking pricing reforms, converting fixed vehicle fees to 
> pay-as-you-drive pricing, and increasing investment in alternative 
> modes. Focusing on just one planning objective at a time, such as 
> increased fuel economy, often results in planning decisions that solve 
> one problem but exacerbate others, making society worse off overall. 
> True sustainability requires more comprehensive decision-making, which 
> finds true "Win-Win" solutions, that is, solutions to one problem that 
> also help solve other economic, social and environmental problems, or 
> at least avoid making them worse ( http://www.vtpi.org/winwin.pdf 
> <http://www.vtpi.org/winwin.pdf>).
>
>
> Best wishes,
> -Todd Litman