At least in the U.S., poor people buy used cars, while existing and proposed ICE bans effect new car sales. Any real economic effect will be delayed until after the ban, and in any event they'll still be buying used cars. I suppose used EVs might end up costing more, but they might end up costing less. Also, the immediate effect of bans might actually be to create a glut of cheap, used ICE cars.

None of that implies less risk of a populist backlash, though; not for any class of 'mericans, rich or poor.

At least in the US, poor people used to but used cars, until the used car market tanked in 2021 or so. Now they buy new, but finance for 84+ months.

In much of the world, owning a car at all puts you above "poor people". While owning a car is sadly needed in some parts of the world to get to work or even the stores (US..), it's a massive financial burden for most people. If you care for poor people, thinking about how people can go about their daily lives without spending thousands of dollars each year on owning a car would be the way to go.

If a comment on hackernews seems like it’s only written about the US, then it probably is.

If you can afford a car you are not poor. In the US (and Europe) there are almost no poor people. What we call poor are still middle class by world standards.

This is getting away from the relevant definition of poor. The person above was talking about how people will vote, so what matters here is whether they're poor relative to other voters within their own country.

> If you can afford a car you are not poor

I'm not sure I agree with this. In many parts of the US or Europe, you could easily be in a position where you can afford a car (and need one for work), but cannot afford housing. It's true that you might well still be well off by world standards (a car roof is still a roof), but I think I'd require "food, clean water, clothing and reliable shelter" to be a bare minimum for "not poor".

They’re only banning sales of new EVs in the short term, and poor people don’t buy new cars anyway. By the time they are buying EVs, they’ll be much cheaper.

I doubt this.

The manufacturer are pushing subscription-base model. Used electric car won't become cheap

Manufacturers are also pushing this for ICE cars, so that’s not really a differentiation point between ICEs and electric. Hopefully we will get legislation to tame this trend for cars and other goods.

When I bought my used EV there were 2 options: Leaf or Zoe. As a high percentage of Zoe's had rented batteries, and the websites didn't have a filter for that, I didn't even bother test driving one.

You missed out - they’re giving away the batteries for almost nothing now to get rid of the lease. Mine was manufactured in 2011 (!) and is still at 93% of its original 22 kWh capacity, which is amazing compared to a Leaf.

I doubt that. They are trying the subscription model, but used car drivers are more price sensitive and are likely to not fall for it. If the car doesn't have a lifetime subscription included used car drivers will soon get the word out don't buy that car. Car manufactures depend on their cars having a good resale value - people who buy new cars tend to trade them in every 3 years, and that only works out because the car has value to someone else.

It will take time for this to work out in the market. BMW is small enough to trick people, but the large car makers are not.

This might be true in USA where society have built itself to be almost fully dependent on cars. As a non-american: I have not owned a car in 10 years. You are not forced to have to own a car by some force of nature.

> You are not forced to have to own a car

Well, no, but

> society have built itself to be almost fully dependent on cars

You don't state where you live, but odds are good your country is mostly car dependent. Sure transit is useful for a few (10%) of people who live in the city, but if you look at the numbers in almost every country cars are the vast majority of transport if the country is rich enough to afford them. If the country isn't that rich you will see other things, but as they become richer they become car dependent.

For what it's worth, you might find this list handy the next time you find yourself in a discussion about car dependence and how it varies across the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_...

Not all countries are car-centric as USA

That's objectively true because it's an absolute. Most advanced nations are pretty much car-dependent, however.

Isn't it populist to call this a tax on poor people?

It's not populist to call things what they really are.

You know how I know you aren't poor? You think anyone in the bottom quartile will buy a new car. This is hardly a regressive policy. It directly targets the wealthier populations.

That said, in the interest of honest debate, it will shift the used car market prices significantly initially until supply of used EVs spins up. Although this is very secondary.

Partly the use market exists in ICE because there isn't really a cheap new ICE, but with stuff like sodium ions and the fundamental simplicity of the EV drivetrain, what I think is going to happen is that you're going to get a much wider range of electric cars that will suit a lot more modes of transportation and people won't have to use old ICE Used cars to get around.

I think it's going to happen is essentially you're going to get like a $10,000 new EV you can buy that's going to be cheaper to use energywise/ fuel-wise than a clunker ice.

I think the driver this will be the Chinese / India markets where you have basically two to three billion people that will want cars at that price point and that stuff will eventually make its way into the US

It's less populist and more a talking point. It's the perfect cover. "We can't stop allowing the rich to destroy the climate because we care so much about poor people."

In '35 it's doubtful ICE will be cheaper than EV anyway (look at price development over last decade...) Banning ICE will speed up this development.

Climate change will disproportionately affect people who are already vulnerable.

Tax carbon emissions and use the money to provide good affordable alternatives (public transportation) for people who don't afford an EV today.

ICE prices will continue to drop. SSD hard drives (the newer, more efficient and faster technology) prices have plummeted in the last 10 years, however spinning rust prices have also plummeted, making spinning rust the only choice if capacity-per-dollar is your metric.

You also mention climate change, but I don't see how an extra average degree of weather (if that materializes) will be worse than stripping poor people of transportation and condemning them to never having a job (since most lower rung jobs require a car).

Certainly, these poor people will absolutely eviscerate you at the polls if you level them with this massive poor tax.

As for public transportation, the US is incapable of building new rail infrastructure. California's $150,000,000,000 LA-to-SF train is an unmitigated disaster, Chicago's rolling stock is extremely old and falling apart and New York City takes 12 years to build 4 miles of new lines, at a cost that is quadruple what France would spend for identical infrastructure.

You're in a dream world. The same people who claim that a poor people tax helps them also support cash pits known as modern rail infrastructure in the US (it's more like grift and fraud, though).

You're the one dreaming.

The US is fundamentally incapable of building public transportation? Ludicrous. What's required is political will.

ICE prices will not drop faster than EV. It's much more mature technology.

If forbidding new ICE cars (in 7+ years) "strips people of transportation" we clearly need som kind of subsidies to alleviate that.

Climate change is a threat. It's not just something people talk about because it's fun. The current estimates predict 3 degrees of warming until the end of the century. That's assuming we stop burning fossile fuels some time this century. The disruption this would cause to agriculture and living conditions around the world are just staggering. If nothing else, consider the costs of 2 meeters sea level rise until 2100...

Preventing climate change is a cost saving measure.

Poor people drive buses, not cars.

The cheap EVs aren't here yet, but the technology has the potential to eventually become cheaper than ICE. 30% of EV cost is currently in the battery, and this will drop.

This! I mean, we saw the same with computing: the first PCs cost thousands of dollars, but by the start of the nineties they were much more affordable already. Mostly because of technology advances and mass production, but of course also because of moving chip/board production to cheaper countries. Same with mobile phones, smartphones, laptops etc. etc.

PCs still cost thousands of dollars. If you are interested in AI/machine learning then $2k is the bare minimum.

Nah, a GTX 1060 6GB for $100 + any 10-year old i5/i7 is still surprisingly capable for messing about with ML. It's not fast but it gets the job done. Also, getting free compute for messing around in, say, Google Cloud is still pretty easy. If you get to the point where those 2 options become a bottleneck, you're probably informed enough to find work in the field and afford something nicer.

People interested in AI/machine learning are a small niche. Your AI/machine learning computer is about as interesting to most people as large agriculture sprayer is to your average car buyer.

My PC cost about 400€ and I'm a professional user. Most people are fine with the capabilities of a Raspberry Pi.

People don't always manage to vote their interests even if/when they manage to rationally identify what those are. Welcome to politics.

> massive tax on poor people (ICE bans)

Don't blame EV and or the environment for this. Car culture in the US created unsustainable cities and destroyed public transportation.

Car ownership itself has always been a regressive tax.

ICEs also supplement power grids and enable agriculture. The car is not the centerpiece of fossil fuels helping the poor

The very poorest don't even drive and are also disproportionately impacted by pollution from driving. The strata above that buys used cars.

The poorest folks I know are driving used Bolts. Money talks. Aside from the recent pandemic-fueled car price bubble, compliance EVs were really cheap on the used market.