As IF Times

link States look to tax hybrid and electric car owners to recoup road funding | Fox News.

It’s hard to make stuff like this up.  The image of the snake eating its own tail now has some real life examples.  As many may know, the automobile and petroleum industry are responsible for incalculable benefits to the modern world, not only from their respective utilities but as importantly from the taxes associated with their use.  Roads, highways and bridges couldn’t be afforded if taxation from fuel and vehicle sales didn’t exist.  Up here on the west coast, fully half of the amount charged on a liter of gasoline are taxes of some sort or another.

If electric vehicles ever achieve ubiquity of common use for the average person, the taxes associated with petro fuel sales would plummet. According to the U.S. Bureau of Statistics, in 2009, there were over 254 million passenger vehicles registered in the U.S.  As of 2011, there were an estimated 2 million hybrid electric vehicles.

Observing these statistics, this is unlikely to happen in the next decade or so unless there’s a quantum leap in battery technology.  As of now, the workable range of most electric vehicles will barely allow for a trip to drop the kids off at school plus a run to Costco.  What is seldom mentioned is the fact that all eco-vehicles are subsidized by governments at purchase, anywhere from $2500 to $7500 per vehicle.  So what we have are more expensive, less efficient vehicles that will be taxed more than already efficient gasoline vehicles in order to maintain the same notional level of road tax budgets.  This turns the classic Mies Van Der Rohe dictum of less is more on its head.

It’s not too much a leap of logic to draw the parallel with the hypothetical situation of hiring as many law enforcement officers as possible as a means to deter crime.   At some point, at least in theory, there will be no criminals and you’ll have to tax the police just to keep paying them.  Oddly, this has not happened in real life as the same scenario applied using lawyers has had just the opposite effect.  Presently the United States and Canada have the most amount of practising lawyers ever in history.  Strangely, life is neither necessarily easier nor safer.  All that’s happened is that we’ve created a more byzantine legal system with potentially more lawbreakers.  Naturally, to protect themselves, the people need to hire more lawyers.

Getting back to our unfolding drama regarding electric/green vehicles, taxing them may not be a bad thing since most who own them probably deserve to be taxed anyway.  A large contingent are likely eco-weenie snobs and can afford to pay the exaggerated price in order to maintain their personal levels of smugness.  However, the limited range of the cars will quickly annoy them when they get caught in one of the traffic jams of most major cities such as L.A. Chicago and New York.  When the Chevy Volt dies only 3 miles from home, it’ll be back to the Tahoe.

link 2013 BMW M5 Test Drive – BMW M5 Review – Popular Mechanics.

It’s amusingly predictable that in any given year, all ‘prestige’ branded cars such as Mercedes, BMW, Porsche or Audi are offering models that are either bigger, faster, handles better,  is more luxurious or all of the above.  The entry bar for any one of these prestige marques is  easily a minimum of $90,000…plus tax, luxury tax, gas guzzler tax, dealer prep and undercoating. 

This is incongruous because never before in the history of the automobile have gasoline prices been higher, speed limits so avidly enforced and the whole idea of conspicuous consumerism so widely frowned upon.  When one reads the statistics that describe some of these cars, it’s lunacy.  In the case of the spiffy new BMW 550i model described in the article, the company claims it puts out 560hp and 500 lb-ft of torque.  Granted, this all happens with a claimed 30 per cent fuel economy improvement over it’s previous generation model, so we won’t dismiss the engineering involved.  But 560 hp?  Imagine the image of 560 horses tethered to the front of a wagon and one gets the idea of how much power we’re talking about.  In other words, on any given farming community of 50 years ago, there wouldn’t be as many horses figuratively pulling plows around as there would be pulling  just one rich guy in a car today.

The speed and acceleration claims are also amusing.  Most prestige cars eligible to even be included in the group have acceleration times of from 0 to “hello officer” or 60 mph in less than 6 seconds.  In the case of the “new and improved” Porsche 911, this number is sub 4 seconds!  Why?  In most cities these days, 60 mph is over the speed limit already, so what’s the cachet of being able to reach it in a scant 4 seconds? None of this makes any sense in a world where increasingly people are pressured to conform, to adhere to some arbitrary standards and expectations of ‘responsible’ behavior and most of all, to be green. 

But so what?  If there are idiots out there willing to pay out big money to access superb pieces of engineering, then there should be companies which are allowed to cater to them.   At a time when so much of people’s daily lives are restricted by the smothering nannyism of the state, at least there are still those that are able to thumb their noses in some small way against this PC crowd. Good for those that are able to buck the pressure to drive around in eco-weenie vehicles the size of shopping carts. 

It goes against human nature to settle in as part of the crowd.  There are always those that want to be bigger, richer, faster, better or more good looking.  That is what has always driven people to success.  If this were not the case, we’d have no fashion and clothing industry.  We’d all be wearing Mao suits.  Buying prestige cars that reflect this mentality is a not so subtle way of advertising this.  Car makers have always understood that purchases are all about statements about the purchasers themselves.  Even purchasers of Prius’ are making a statement, that of being politically correct and of being a  subscriber to the weenie dictates.

So as ridiculous as some of the statistics and features of the newer cars may be, they fullfill a role in society.  They provide an outlet for people to express themselves in a time when there is overwhelming social pressure to conform. They are still a symbol of aspiration and achievement no matter how nonsensical they may be.