[sustran] Re: 14 million USD cool license plate

[Zvi Leve]

Given that people are clearly willing to pay more to purchase an automobile
(or a licence plate) which makes some sort of 'fashion statement', wouldn't
it be really cool if someone could find some way to convince people to make
a similar statement by 'voluntarily' paying more for the fuel that they put
in their cars? For example, one could choose to buy "green petrol" which
would have a certain surcharge per liter of fuel, and the proceeds could be
used to offset the car's carbon footprint (for example).

The tricky part is how to make the choice of fuel into a visible "fashion
statement" - green licence plates anyone? Ideally the symbolic part would
even be flexible with the choices that one makes. Feel like supporting your
national football team this week? Buy 'viva Espagna' fuel and show your
colors!

Anyway, I think that the idea does have potential. Obviously no one wants to
pay more taxes, but if people can make a statement by doing something, they
may be willing to do that!

Cheers,

Zvi

On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 11:51 AM, Carlosfelipe Pardo <carlosfpardo at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I read about this issue (link below) yesterday in Wall Street Journal. Abu
> Dhabi has a bidding system for "cool" license plates (like single digit
> numbers, or specific combinations). They use the
> money to build a hospital for traffic accident victims (of course, could
> also have been used for other more cause-related measures, such as
> speed-controling measures, etc).
>
> Link to story:
> http://www.autounleashed.com/14-million-license-plate-auctioned-in-uae
>
> The article I read is more detailed but I didn't find it online (if anyone
> finds it, would be great to have the link). I know this is not exactly the
> Shanghai or
> Singapore plate bidding, but it's related and could be taken into account
> as a similar version (as long as revenue is properly spent in
> transport-related projects). From my point of view, this is "cooler" than
> the Shanghai/Singapore ones. Bangkok has something similar (you pay
> more for a cool license plate), but I don't know if it's a bid or
> market-driven, and what they do with the money... would be nice to find out.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Carlosfelipe Pardo
>
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