There was once a legend about vehicle’s size and … Well…
Comment on A 7,000-Pound Car Smashed Through a Guardrail. That’s Bad News for All of Us.
filister@lemmy.world 8 months agoJudging by the general trend I don’t think this is happening anytime soon. The overall car industry is obsessed with even bigger cars. And even in Europe it is sickening to see those half buses on our roads. And this is especially true for big cities, where parking space is very limited and usually those cars occupy park space for 1.5-2 cars.
kronarbob@lemmy.world 8 months ago
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I would pay money to have this physically mailed to everyone. I have money because I have an economy car.
ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yeah because emission standards are based on size and weight. So why spend the money making environmentally effective equipment when you can just make everything bigger and still rake in money?
HaywardT@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
The EPA under the Obama admistration enabled this. I was surprised to learn this. It needs to change. I think trains need to change too.
realitista@lemmy.world 8 months ago
That’s because the USA subsidizes bigger trucks as “work vehicles”. This practice needs to stop and they need to be taxed more than smaller vehicles.
CoopaLoopa@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
State vehicle registration where I’m at is based on vehicle weight. Costs about $400 to renew the registration on my daily driver and $600 to renew for a larger truck. Motorcycles are only like $80 to renew.
Consumers are being taxed more for larger vehicles, it’s the manufacturers trying to avoid safety regulations that are seeing the cost benefits.
realitista@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This article summarizes the subsidies I’m talking about. Here’s an excerpt:
nothead@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’m guessing you don’t actually pay attention to the tax law, then. Annual vehicle registration (aka, a vehicle ownership tax) is more expensive as the weight on the vehicle goes up. Vehicles over a certain weight limit require more complex and strict drivers license classes (granted, class B starts at 26,001 lbs which is way higher than even today’s heaviest consumer cars), and any vehicle used for work has higher insurance and regulatory costs, regardless of the size.
Buying an F350 (a truck that really only has a place in very specific situations anyway) requires so much extra work and almost always requires a class B license because of the kind of work being done with it. People who choose to get something like that because of small-dick syndrome are idiots. And that’s coming from a person who used to drive 18-wheelers and still has a compact SUV as my daily driver.
realitista@lemmy.world 8 months ago
See my post above in the thread where I show the laws I am talking about and cite source.
EatATaco@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Can you cite this? Don’t get me wrong, I understand that if it’s actually a work vehicle you probably get some tax credits/breaks, but I highly doubt many consumers are getting these breaks for buying large vehicles.
Terces@lemmy.world 8 months ago
youtu.be/jN7mSXMruEo?feature=shared
Not op, but I really liked this video, as it explains quite a bit. It is of course a biased video, but still…
EatATaco@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I watched most of the video, it’s primarily about safety. It’s says the growth is mainly due to the regulations not applying the same to light trucks, which SUVs are classified as. This seems to contradict the claim that I was asking about.
If there is something about the state subsidizing the vehicles and I missed it, I would appreciate a time stamp. Noone needs to convince me that suvs are unsafe and an environmental disaster.
realitista@lemmy.world 8 months ago
See my post above with citation.
fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
In Australia it breaks down thusly. (for reference average wage is about $80k per annum).
If you buy a vehicle for $50k, you’re entitled to claim a tax deduction for that cost, usually spread over a number of years.
However, if you buy a vehicle for $100k, you’re only entitled to claim a tax deduction for the first ~$56k (changes each year), unless the vehicle has a large enough carrying capacity that it can be considered to have been designed for the purpose of carrying stuff rather than people.
This rule is designed to disallow deductions for wanky vehicles. Like why should someone be allowed a deduction for driving a wanky mercedes SLK when a cheap and chearful toyota camry can perform the same task of moving a taxpayer from point A to point B. Of course, if someone buys a $300k prime mover (tractor?) designed for hauling 90 tonnes of wheat from a farm to a port, it’s just not possible to do that with a toyota camry so you should be entitled to claim the entire cost.
Suppose you have 2 vehicles, both costing $100k, one is a regular sized Toyota truck, and the other is a ridiculous RAM truck or something. Suppose you plan to sell whichever you buy, after 8 years or so, when it’s value is $50k.
On the Toyota you can only claim a tax deduction on the $6k difference between the $56k notional purchase price and the $50k sale price, which if your tax rate is about a third then you save yourself $2k in tax, so the vehicle cost you $48k to own for 8 years.
On the RAM you can claim a tax deduction on the entire $50k difference between the $100k purchase price and the $50k sale price. A third of that is ~$16k, so it only cost you $34k to own that vehicle for 8 years.