The EV tax credit is dead – here's what happens next • Hacker News Board

Re: The EV tax credit is dead – here's what happens next

#21

Post by triceratops » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 5:09 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #19

triceratops wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sooner we force middle class people and up move to EVs—which they can afford to do—the sooner we can create a robust market for used EVs for the bottom quantile. Completely agree. > And in the lowest income quantile, households spend over $6,000 per year on transportation. And that's a much bigger impact on personal finances, proportionately, than higher-income people. > because the alternative is paying much m…

> Because that's how American cities are built It’s not just “American cities.” Even in Tokyo—which has transit better than what Americans could ever aspire to build—getting around on public transit takes much longer than driving. And it can take even longer if you change jobs and your workplace is no longer near the same train like as your previous workplace. Even with Tokyo’s amazing infrastructure, people using pu…

> getting around on public transit takes much longer than driving [in Tokyo]

Citation needed.

"People in Tokyo have less flexibility in finding jobs compared to rural Oregon".

Citation strongly needed. The sheer volume of jobs and opportunity in Tokyo simply bears no comparison to Oregon or Idaho.

Re: The EV tax credit is dead – here's what happens next

#22

Post by triceratops » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 6:40 PM UTC

floxy wrote: post #13

rayiner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America, even most poor people have cars. In the bottom income quantile, 70% of households own a car: https://data.bts.gov/stories/s/Transportation-Cost-Burden-Tr... . In the bottom 20-40%, it’s 88%. And in the lowest income quantile, households spend over $6,000 per year on transportation. It’s not “financially disastrous,” because the alternative is paying much more money in rent and losing the flexibility to pu…

>The median US car payment is $749 new and $529 used. Most cars are apparently owned outright / not currently financed? 66% according to this source at least: https://accountinginsights.org/what-percentage-of-cars-on-th...

Cars on the road != car purchases. 70% of new cars are financed. It could be as high as 40% for used cars, but there isn't high-quality data for that.

Re: The EV tax credit is dead – here's what happens next

#23

Post by Schiendelman » Tue, Oct 07, 2025, 3:41 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #6

rayiner wrote: post #3

We should dispense with this Obama-era “nudge” nonsense and simply ban gas cars.

That would be a disaster unless we build public transit systems that are actually good first.

I looked at your comment history because we agree on a lot!

This is an interesting one. Public transit can pretty much only be built after there is demand. Because we limit growth so much, there are very few places where we have allowed growth that would support transit.

If you were to overturn land use regulation as a whole, you would get dense places, and then we could get more transit...