California Considers Tracking Your Car

dan_sdot writes "California's budget problem has led the state to consider desperate measures: taxing you based on how much you drive. The only problem is the way they propose to do it. California is now proposing to put GPS devices on all new cars to track how far people drive and tax them accordingly."

Comments

Re:Dont they already do this?

[cephyn]

Did you read the article? oh wait, I'm not new here, so no, you didn't.

Since a prius will drive much further on a tank than a person in an H2, if both individuals drive 100 miles, the person in the H2 pays significantly more in taxes. They're proposing to change the system so that its based on how far you drive, not how much gas you use.

Re:Dont they already do this?

[Thagg]

The older Prius (pre-2004) was a tiny car -- in fact, it was basically a re-engined Echo.

The newer ones are far larger. It's quite a nice four-passenger car, with a reasonably roomy hatchback and other bits of storage space.

And, the new ones are more powerful and more fuel efficient than the older ones. You just cannot imagine the lengths that Toyota engineers went to to get the last few percent of fuel efficieny and pollution-control. Thermos bottles to retain heat in the coolant, carbon canister to trap startup hydrocarbons, drive-by-wire braking to do only regenerative braking until below 5 MPH, fins and baffles under the car to route air more efficiently...the list is almost endless. It basic Synergy drive, which throws in for free a CVT by basically using electricity the way other cars use transmission fluid, is the best known radical system, but it's only the beginning.

Ob-topic -- this is an insane scheme. I have to agree with the tinfoil-hat crowd that the only reason this makes sense is to get the GPS units into the cars for some other purposes -- like making it more expensive to drive through downtowns in rush hour (as they do in London, Singapore, and other rediculously congested cities.)

There are so very many ways that the State (and the state) benefit from more fuel efficient cars, that reducing the incentive to drive them is remarkably short-sighted. Treating the fuel tax as a carbon-dioxide tax really does make sense -- those Hummers and SUV's really do impose a cost on everybody else. Reducing the gasoline-delivery infrastructure is a good thing, from reducing the number of tankers that need to port in California, reducing the number of tankers on the roads, reducing the number of leaky gas tanks under service stations...these reflect costs on everybody that the gas tax goes some part of the way to paying for. Fewer kids dying of asthma would be a good thing.

If they want more money from the gas tax, they should just raise the tax.

Thad Beier