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I'm a bit worried about creation of a loophole similar to emission and safety exemptions for "light trucks" in the US that made SUVs and pick-up trucks explode in popularity. A common-sense exemption for actual work tools ended up making it most profitable to promote and sell ridiculously oversized cars to everyone. In the end it backfired on both safety and emissions overall.

An exemption for sports cars could similarly be abused and backfire if people who would prefer to continue driving their 4-cylinder cars will have only V12 as the only option.

For those curious about "the loophole":

In the 1970s, the United States government established regulations on vehicle emissions and safety standards through the Clean Air Act and the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. These regulations required automobile manufacturers to meet certain emissions and safety standards, which led to the production of smaller and more fuel-efficient cars.

However, a loophole was created for "light trucks," which were exempt from many of these regulations. This exemption was intended to benefit small businesses and farmers who used pickup trucks and vans for their work.

In the 1980s and 1990s, automakers started exploiting this loophole by producing larger and more powerful "light trucks" like SUVs and pickups. These vehicles were classified as "light trucks" even though they were often used for personal transportation rather than work purposes.

Since these "light trucks" were exempt from many emissions and safety standards, automakers could produce larger and less fuel-efficient vehicles without facing the same penalties as they would for passenger cars. As a result, SUVs and pickups exploded in popularity, as consumers were drawn to their size, power, and perceived safety.

This loophole has since been narrowed, and many SUVs and pickups now have to meet the same emissions and safety standards as passenger cars. However, the legacy of this exemption lives on, as SUVs and pickups continue to be popular in the United States.

The way I was told the story, was that there were two exemptions, one for sports cars, and one for utility vehicles. So, just to be sure, the new cars were baptised "Sport Utility Vehicles", which is obviously non-sense, a vehicle cannot be at the same time both sports and utility.

What if your sport is competing with other utility outfits on how fast and how much you can achieve?

This is exactly how loopholes are found. Forget the spirit of the law and look at the letter of the law.

You could write it in such a way where there are constraints.

In California you can register a kit car. These cars are not compliant with many regulations. However it’s limited to 500 a year. Which is nothing.

Ferrari now makes 13k cars a year. The previous boss put the cap at 9k iirc. They don’t make as many as they can sell. Neither does Porsche.

These companies can do just fine with production caps that are completely reasonable environmentally.

The selling trucks to everyone was probably more due to that fact that in 1964 the US imposed a 25% tax on imported light trucks to retaliate for a European tax on US chicken (google chicken tax). This highly motivated domestic manufactures to promote truck purchases (and later SUVs). 60 years of marketing and here we are.

The tax is still in effect.

Which is why the right way to do this is to increase taxes on fossil fuels to the point that it makes financial sense to upgrade an old tanker of steel factory or buy an electric car.

People are terrible at doing total cost of ownership budgeting, and will be swayed by a cheaper price upfront. You need to provide the economical incentive (or regulation) when the car is bought to counteract it.

> People are terrible at doing total cost of ownership budgeting, and will be swayed by a cheaper price upfront.

All people don't behave this way. People with limited incomes who drive cars generally are very careful about upfront and operational costs. That's why they are the primary buyers of small (mostly used) gasoline powered vehicles. They nearly all have a sense of what kind of MPG they can afford to get. This is because they have higher energy burden.

The people who make the choice of buying an inefficient (usually larger) car are usually buying more expensive cars, and are those who have enough income that energy costs aren't a significant burden for them.

New and used EVs aren't yet affordable for the former group, but when that happens, lower income people will make pretty rational choices about operational costs.

As a counter, the fact that finance options have increased to 48, 60, and 72 month options. Anyone concerned about the overall cost would never choose 72 months, but the majority of people only care about that the number for each month. So while they are getting a lower monthly payment, the overall price paid for the car is much higher.

Sometimes people make "unrational" choices solely because of something more immediate to them.

I can confirm this - I got a 72 month loan on my current car when my finances were a lot worse and it was pitched to me as making it affordable. The price every month now is incredibly sustainable, but I have this suspicion that I'm way overpaying for what I bought.

Honestly, everything about that purchasing experience has taught me to steer clear of dealers unless I'm ready to buy on the spot and have done my own homework.

There's a lot to consider with financing a car that isn't necessarily obvious to most people. We've all heard that the car depreciates in value significantly the second you drive it off the lot. With a 72 month note, you are upside down on the note for a much much longer time. Since it is a car, there is a greater than zero chance of getting in a wreck. It could be a situation that after insurance pays off the deemed value, you are still owing the financing company for a car that you can no longer use. This is why gap insurance is important for the longer term financing.

> Anyone concerned about the overall cost would never choose 72 months, but the majority of people only care about that the number for each month.

There's no golden rule about ideal finance term lengths. It could make a lot of sense for an individual to elect to maximize near term cash flow in exchange for a higher total cost.

After all, in car dependent societies the chief value of a car is to get you to your place for work so you can earn money to support yourself.

Car prices also don't scale down infinitely, so it's not like you can always find a practical car for yourself that you can pay off in 48 months.

Similarly, if overall costs were the only thing that mattered, I'd have no mortgage on my house, but then I just wouldn't have a house, so I instead have a 30 year mortgage.

Are we really trying to compare financing a house to financing a car? I have an issue with that for one main reason. Your house doesn't move and subject to the irrational decisions of other houses moving at high rates of velocity within mere feet of each other. Also, your house is pretty much (if you maintain it) only going to increase in value. Your car will never increase in value within any rational expectation. I seriously doubt that in 25 years (time required to be considered classic) that collectors will be looking to buy restored Chevy Cruise, Ford Escape, or Toyota Corolla from an auction house.

> Are we really trying to compare financing a house to financing a car? I have an issue with that for one main reason. Your house doesn't move and subject to the irrational decisions of other houses moving at high rates of velocity within mere feet of each other.

No, but plenty of other unplanned things happen to houses. Otherwise why have homeowners insurance?

> Also, your house is pretty much (if you maintain it) only going to increase in value.

That depends on your timescale. Can you wait 10 years for a house not to be underwater? A whole lot of folks from 2008 couldn't - including people who were current on their mortgage but needed to move for work. Also plenty of locations go into secular decline and the houses lose real value even with maintenance.

2008 situation was a weird one with crooked finance companies screwing a whole lot of people. sure, some blame can be placed on those taking the loans, but that's quite a bit of victim blaming to me.

the concept of people buying houses and moving every couple of years is something that I always thought strange. i don't care what kind of loan you took out, there's no way that can be sustainable. emergencies happen, and there are somethings that can be done to help, but using 2008 as a torch bearer seems off to me.

Car sellers will advertise it, and in the worst case, the government can keep jacking up fossil fuel taxes so that if people did not learn arithmetic in elementary school, they will learn it within a couple years of owning the car.

My personal car is only 1/65M of car emissions, surely it is meaningless so we can make an exception for myself while y’all accept the rules. :)

I absolutely agree and was very much confused by the article. It seems the obvious answer is to cap the number of such cars that can be produced by a manufacturer per year (sole are probably already below that cap) and tax regular gasoline/diesel for “consumer road use” at high enough rates with that tax going to greenification in general (refurbishing plants, carbon capture, etc).

Devising an alternate fuel vertical (from fuel synthesis to the engines that use it) seems so damn wasteful and purposefully oblivious that I’m genuinely thinking it can only happen in an attempt to avoid red tape in a bureaucratic hell-hole.

> sales of super sports cars (ferrari, mclaren, lamborghini) combined are less than 20k units per year

Ferrari shipped 13221 units in 2022 (https://www.drive.com.au/news/ferrari-record-deliveries-prof...).

Porsche shipped 7419 units of 911 in 2022 (https://carfigures.com/us-market-brand/porsche/911).

Chevrolet shipped 9130 Corvette units just in the US (https://gmauthority.com/blog/2023/01/chevrolet-corvette-sale...).

Lamborghini delivered 9233 vehicles worldwide in 2022 (https://robbreport.com/motors/cars/lamborghini-sales-record-...).

McLaren figures are pretty difficult to get. Seems to be in the range of 1500 units per year total.

thanks for following up with more detailed numbers here.

> Ferrari shipped ... Lamborghini shipped

both of these also make SUVs now, which account for the majority of their sales. i was only referring to their real sports car offerings. those are traditionally roughly 5k worldwide per those 3 mentioned brands.

> Corvette ... 911

not really super sports cars, at least most editions of them. and i agree if including them all we are looking at a lot larger numbers, not that it changes my argument much.

Fwiw, having a look on a french second hand website, most Ferraris seem to have an average yearly mileage of 3000-10000km.

The ones up for sale in a general classifieds site are likely to be the higher-used ones. Many private collected Ferraris are driven under 100 miles per year, but won’t show up in general classifieds. (If they change hands, it’s more likely via word of mouth or marque-specific forums like f-chat.)

The f-chat listings are significantly lower miles/year: https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/forums/cars.303/

This seems like an easy fix if they're not actually being driven, just don't make these supercars street legal. Have the exemption be "if you're driving the car on a racetrack then it can be ICE."