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Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

>Should we allow a free market to continue producing vehicles that contribute to the degradation of the planet?

That's not my argument. It would be a good thing if all governments outlawed ICE consumer vehicles. However, headlines like this are portraying Norway as some kind of progressive utopia where everyone just wants to drive EVs.

Obviously you can make people do whatever you want with aggressive enough tax policies. But the goal should be to get EVs to a fair market price point where they truly compete, not reliant on subsidies.

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> However, headlines like this are portraying Norway as some kind of progressive utopia where everyone just wants to drive EVs.

Headlines like this are portraying Norway as some kind of progressive democracy, where the majority wants to have laws to drive up EV sales.

> the majority wants to have laws to drive up EV sales

It's a representative democracy, so it's the voted–in government officials instead of the majority of people ;)

The difference does matter, because the cause and effect is inverted: the government is elected... And now it passes laws such as this.

It's not the population that voted so the government would pass these laws.

Kia niro comes out the same price, electric sells the most.

Hybrid 405k NOK [0] Electric 415k NOK [1]

0: https://www.kia.com/api/bin/docDownload?program=brochure&loc... 1: https://www.kia.com/api/bin/docDownload?program=brochure&loc...

There are significant subsidies and schemes that the Norwegian government offers that reduces the total purchase price of the electric.

Yes, that is correct. But the argument is, «electric cheaper -> sells more». My argument is that the people of Norway wants electric, when priced the same. Electric is the new shiny that most people in Norway want.

But they're not priced the same. The MSRP is just the MSRP and does not include the incentives for EVs.

They are priced the same, I’ve bought this car to this price. The MSRP includes no sale tax (mva) and no horse power tax. Are you thinking of some other incentives?

The retail price is the same, sure, but the effective price is much different because the incentives come from different tax and rebate schemes that aren't factored into the retail price. EVs have no VAT in Norway, no road tax, no toll or ferry fees [0] -- that's a major difference in the effective price!

[0] https://elbil.no/english/norwegian-ev-policy/

Sorry, thought you meant “initial” total purchasing price, if that makes sense. Road tax is back, this year. No ferry fee is only on Europe roads. No toll fee still. Also service cost is probably cheaper, as electric has less failing motor parts, not sure about the battery though.

>Kia niro comes out the same price, electric sells the most.

That's my whole point. Of course more people will choose an EV when they are at price parity. The problem is that they are not. The Niro EV sells for a ~40% premium in the US over the ICE version, because the government subsidies are far less.

ICE cars rely on subsidies, why shouldn't EVs?

The US federal government subsidizes $20B per year towards fossil fuels across oil, gas, and coal.

The EU subsidizes €55B per year towards fossil fuels.

https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subs...

This all depends on your definition of "subsidy." https://www.forbes.com/sites/drillinginfo/2016/02/22/debunki...

That article was written by Drilling Info and reads like a lobbying piece. Here's some info on that company:

Drilling Info has more than 2,700 accounts globally with more than 20,000 users. Drilling Info members produce more than 90 percent of domestic oil and gas in the United States.

They're in the oil and gas business -- of course they want to "debunk" any info about the subsidies given to that industry.

I'll take one point from that article as an example of BS:

"Intangible Drilling Costs ($3.5 billion “subsidy” – low estimate is $780 million) - Intangible Drilling Costs are essentially the cost of drilling a new well that have no salvageable value. Currently, most exploration companies are allowed to deduct 100% of the costs in the year they are incurred with the majors able to deduct 70% of the costs immediately with the remaining 30% amortized over 5 years. In what world would money spent that may or may not be recovered be capitalized as an asset?"

Plenty of companies spend plenty of money on R&D every year that goes nowhere. For some reason, the oil & gas industry gets a refund on their exploration but other companies don't. I work in R&D in tech -- should the government fund my complete salary for projects that turn out to not be viable? Sounds great if you're an entrepreneur -- start all the companies you want and get refunded by the government for all of your misses.

LOL - They don't get a refund. They get to deduct those as business costs exactly like R&D expenditures. The argument from the *those are subsidies" camp is that they should have to capitalize them as a purchased asset (and depreciate them on the usual schedule) and not be able to deduct them in the year of expenditure, which would be like treating R&D the same as purchasing a building. As the article says, that doesn't make any sense at all. And allowing a deduction of intangible drilling costs much like all other business deductions is in no way a "subsidy."

Many of these are regular business expense deductions like depletion and foreign tax credits. They’re not specific to carbon energy industries and aren’t subsidies per se.

Exactly right. A consequence of the US tax code being so complicated is that regular people (even very highly educated regular people) do not understand even elementary tax concepts.

What's the net tax/subsidies on fossil fuels?

The headline doesn't seem misleading. I would also argue that the government giving out incentives for electric cars makes Norway "some kind of progressive utopia" as it is a republic and I assume it is in someway what the people want.

Subsidies can contribute to grow the market enough for that to happen, though.

Ability to scale, test new models, gather experiences et cetera.

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