That headline is really silly if you think about it for about two seconds.
Yep. Not a reliable source of steady income, and will only decrease as EVs become more numerous.
Agreed, but there’s the Drown Government in a Bathtub crowd to deal with.
They not only disagree with the ‘tragedy of the commons’, they deny that a ‘commons’ even exists in the first place.
As @DukeTrout has noted, we have to make it possible where you don’t need a personal car.
In the early 1900s [if not before], many cities had street trolley systems in place for mass transportation. Most were bought up and destroyed by the large auto companies in order to kill off the competition.
And this is why our cities are, for the most part, designed to be car-centric.
What is a STROAD?
Hey, if the Netherlands can do it, why not The Richest Country on Earth?
The layout of our cities bears some resemblance to our expensivee kludge of a medical system…
Instead of fuel/registration taxes on passenger vehicles, why not a tire tax?
They all have tires in common, after all, and the tax can be based on tire size/weight capacity.
People that don’t drive much won’t wear out the tires as quickly, so there’s a kind of built-in usage fee.
The fees for commercial vehicles would remain in place, since they provide the majority of wear & tear on the roads.
Apparently, you don’t like the car… 
I agree, and we should.
It is important, though, to support people during the long development process to get there.
A couple of people have pointed to European cities as an example of cities that aren’t designed around cars. It should be pointed out, though, that unlike many US cities, those European cities developed long before cars even existed.
It’s not going to change overnight. We shouldn’t abandon people while we go from where we are now to where we need to be, especially if they are working to make things better in the interim.
Here in Michigan everyone has that benefit. Apparently we don’t GAF about emissions here.
I’ve driven that uncomfortable POS for 13 years. The entire suspension failed in those 13 years. I have lower a-arms in the garage for the next round of work, and will acquire ball joints prior to that so it will all be done. The last 2 “heat shields” also need to be cut out. Tell me why a car that runs a gas engine half the time of a regular ICE needs “heat shields”? It’s for the aerodynamics, but why weren’t the connectors not provided $.03 dielectric breaks?
edit: @jgs: Emissions testing isn’t required in Michigan anymore because we’re no longer in an EPA non-attainment zone. The Big 3 and their subordinate corporations instituted the emission controls they were required to at the end of the 80’s or early 90’s. By '95, when I moved here, there was no longer annual testing.
Those are the special “ablative” heat shields!
They’ll continue letting us being price gouged for gas, price gouged for insulin, babies starving without formula (some need a certain kind), people literally being slaughtered in the street, just to make Libs look bad. Unfortunately, MAGAts believe everything they say, and have absolutely no critical thinking skills to even question the massive lies that come out of the GQP’s drooling mouths.
I moved here in ‘90 and there already wasn’t testing then. (Or I ignored it? Not completely out of the question…)
That’s an interesting idea I hadn’t heard before. The main downsides that come to mind:
- Tire replacement is usually less frequent than annual registration, so the fee on tires would need to be bigger, and paying that as a lump sum (on top of the normal cost of tires) would be difficult for many folks.
- It would incentivize people to keep driving longer with worn out, unsafe tires. Many states don’t have vehicle inspection requirements so it would be hard to stop them.
- If we’re talking about this as a state tax, it would be easy for many people to circumvent by traveling across state lines to buy tires.
It’s an Atlanta metro thing, affecting a handful of counties. The rest of the state doesn’t have inspections.
True. It would be an ongoing process, taking many years.
Mass transit in this country is a shambles in many places, if it exists at all.
That would seem to be a good place to start.
I hear ya.
I like small cars for agility and gas mileage. They suck for long trips; some worse than others.
Wow. Hondas have a reputation of being generally bulletproof.
Yeesh. Talk about a PITA.
I’m glad to live next to a former mechanic. He has lots of relatively obscure tools, like a ball-joint fork.
Damned if I would ever buy one of those things.
Minor nitpick: a Prius is a Toyota; though Toyotas are also usually pretty reliable.
I live in a city that has pretty good public transit, at least for the western US. When I worked across town from where I lived, my commute was ugly at 45 minutes to/ 1 hr+ back. The same trip via train/bus was 3 hours one way, and that was if I drove to the closest stop of the train line.
That’s a long way from where it needs to be.
Hey, my 20 year old Acura (obvs, made by Honda) only needs new rear shocks right now. 
I was talking about my one, and only, Toyota purchase. Never again.
2 Hondas, 2 Datsuns, and soon my first Mitsubishi. That covers nearly 30 years. My family has odd attachments to Big 3 products, over the same timeframe, they’ve each owned nearly twice as many vehicles, * each*. 
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