Put a heavy tax on gas cars. Then the EV market will thrive
To the editor: Industrial policy is a fool’s errand. Neither politicians, newspapers nor China can pick winners and losers in the marketplace. Tastes, incomes and production costs determine what gets bought and sold. (“Biden needs to put the pedal to the metal on zero-emission cars,” editorial, Aug. 6)
The environmental costs of burning fossil fuels in automobiles are real and significant, and unaccounted for in car prices, but the federal government should not subsidize the purchase and operation of electric vehicles. This would be impossibly complicated, and requires shifting public resources from other purposes.
Instead, tax internal combustion engines at a level that places the estimated cost of the environmental damage they do inside the price of such vehicles, and let the automotive market operate. The electric vehicle market will then thrive.
James E. Moore II, Los Angeles
The writer, an engineering professor at USC, is director of
