The Great Feebate Debate, Part Eight

Dear Mark Warner,

Please put your Presidential aspirations on hold and go wallop George Allen out of his Senate seat. Consider running for president in 2012 or 2016. I would proudly vote for you then. Heck, I'd proudly vote for you in 2008, but there are smaller fish that also need frying, and others who can fry the big fish.

That is all.

Sincerely,
Nick Beaudrot

P.S. By defeating George Allen, you will also do your patriotic duty to spare the country of an endless string of football metaphors during his 2008 presidential campaign.

We're back for another round of debating the efficacy of hybrid car subsidies with Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias. Some key points:

First, the Times' comparison of the V6 Accord Hybrid (29 city, 37 highway) with the four-cylinder Accord (24 city, 34 highway) is a complete red herring. The proper comparison is with the six-cylinder Accord (20 city, 30 highway), to which it compares much more favorably. And even then, the V6 Hybrid actually has another 15 horsepower over the traditional gas engine. Honda is using the Hybrid as an upsell; dad wants the Hybrid because he can go from 0-60 faster, while mom wants it so she isn't spending as much on gasoline. It's fun for the whole family!

Second, improving the fuel economy of cars with more "muscle" from 20/30mpg to 29/37mpg is nothing to sneeze at. For comparison, other cars in roughly the same horsepower class include Volvo S60 (19/26), the Toyota Avalon (22/31), the Saab 9-3 (21/28), the award-winning Chrysler 300 (17/24 -- you gotta love that American ingenuity), and the Nissan Maxima (20/28). A 50% increase in fuel economy is worth a lot in my book.

Third, Ezra's right. Gas taxes are politically infeasible, terribly regressive, and an increase wouldn't force a move to hybrid cars until gas prices reached at European levels. Last I checked, Michigan had two Democratic Senators and a Democratic Governor; I'm not very interested in making them unhappy.

Fourth, Ezra's also right that moving to a general fuel economy feebate system, where taxes and or subsidies are based on the fuel economy rather than the technology used, is a good way to accelerate the move towards more efficient cars. It would also motivate consumers to invest their "efficiency dividend" in consuming less energy, rather than having more/faster/bigger stuff that consumed the same amount. However, it's unclear what such a system would do to US auto manufacturers. Would they have to replace equipment used to manufacture their current fleet? Would they have to spend huge amounts of money on R&D? Would we have to bail them out of their health care spending at the same time?

Fifth, Corn. I don't know what to think about it. Maybe there is some low-hanging fruit in terms of efficiency improvements there, and suddenly producing a gallon of ethanol will require consuming fewer BTUs than it gives off. Maybe not. I don't really know. Up until now, we haven't been using the ethanol subsidy as a sop to Big Corn and various universities that study agriculture somewhat seriously. One could imagine that with a little more effort and scrutiny, all the money we spent on ethanol might actually get put to use, rather than ending up in the pockets of Archer-Daniels-Midland company.

Sixth, Hydrogen. Totally fanciful. Or rather, there's no real way to build a large-scale infrastructure for hydrogen cars in the next 20 years. Perhaps my grandchildren can look forward to the day when they plug their car back into the wall to push its excess brake energy into their apartment complex's reactor, but it's not going to happen in the next 20 or 30 years.

Summary: as I outlined before, without any subsidies, hybrid cars don't yet make sense from the buyer's perspective. Using the tax code or other subsidies to push consumers towards hybrid cars is still worth doing, especially if it motivates continued research and development in the area. That said, the Bush proposal to double the hybrid tax credit or deduction won't make hybrids that much more economical, and will primary benefit upper middle class voters who itemize, while furthering the GOP's starve the beast strategy.

It appears a Consumer Reports study shows that the non-hybrid V6 gets 23 mpg in actual driving conditions, and the hybrid gets 25 mpg. Car and Driver has a similar test that pegs the hybrid's fuel economy at 26 mpg and the non-hybrid near 22mpg.

The Great Feebate Debate, Part Eight Now Playing: Sleater-Kinney / Sleater-Kinney / Slow Song

The Great Feebate Debate, Part Eight
Now Playing: Sleater-Kinney / Sleater-Kinney / Slow Song