UPDATE: This post is completely wrong in its main point, the government has reduced the duty on electric and hybrid cars to zero, which is great. Thank you for Way Of The Dodo for pointing this out
I see a lot of new cars on the road, which depresses me. My car is about about 15 years old and I used to be reassured to see that everyone else had pretty much frozen in the same era. Car taxes being so high, my old car was actually gaining value. Now, alas, it seems like every other car has paper plates. There are new Toyota Vitz’s, new Chinese SUVs, new trucks, new jeeps. Since they dropped the car taxes, car sales have really risen. It’s not that I want a new Vitz or SUV or jeep, though. What I really want is a hybrid or electric car, a Prius or a Leaf or a Volt. Those cars depend on tax breaks to become profitable, but of these magical cars we have none. In a country where the tax policy could so easily encourage future cars, it’s a shame that we’re still importing the past.
Personally, I think we should drop the duty on hybrid and electric cars to zero, reduce the dirty on our streets, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It’s a simply bit of policy the government could do, since dropping taxes is easier than raising them. But alas, no fuzzy dice.
didn’t they remove the VAT on hybrids
I’d assume that they lowered the VAT on hybrids the same as petrol and diesel cars.
The issue is that they need to lower the tax on hybrids more for them to be competitive (they cost more than petrol cars). That is, hybrids and electrics need tax incentives beyond whatever the usual tax is
I’m certain that even if I had the money, I wouldn’t buy a hybrid or electric in the near future. Sometimes you need to be selfish.
no indi, they’ve taken out the entire tax. This is from LBO
“Nov 23, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka has made electric and hybrid cars duty free, while value added tax and rates of depreciation allowed for used cars has also been increased, a budget for 2011 said.”
http://www.lankabusinessonline.com/fullstory.php?nid=349762860
What’s wrong with hybrids? I thought any shortcomings in the electric car would be absent in the hybrid. (I’m assuming electric has less power than petrol and that battery charging takes longer and has to be done more often than a petrol top up, and I’m not trying to be cute or boost your already oversized ego, I just want to know)
Total cost of ownership of a hybrids will be higher when you factor in maintenance at least in next few years. Mostly because of lac of people with correct skills and parts will have to be almost always imported to order for some time. In SL maintenance play a major role in the demand for the car models.
I do not see our typical car buyer going hybrid any time soon. I am a tech fan. Internal combustion engine which is over 300 years old is not my kind of thing. So one day I’ll buy a hybrid/full electric or an air car for that matter. I mean when I have the money to buy a car. Until then, long live private busses!
/R
there are hydrogen fuel cell bikes now.
Why is running a car that runs on electricity that is for the most part produced by diesel (and now coal) superior to running a car that is directly fueled by diesel or petrol?
Is this a case of unthinking importation of California thinking to Sri Lanka? Hybrids will be good once we make most of our electricity from renewable sources.
Hybrid cars are expensive to maintain and have very less re-sale value. Thats when problems crop up to get rid of the hybrid car if you want to change it later.
@RS, that is true. It is essentially pointless to import a hybrid car that plugs into a diesel burning electrical grid. That grid, however, does have some hydro elements so it’s not a total loss. Not sure if it would be cheaper than pumping gas.
On a personal level, I think hybrid cars are cooling, they’re also generally silent, and they don’t emit much or any fumes. Hybrids can be viable before most energy is produced from renewable sources, on a consumer level it’s ultimately a matter of cost and efficiency. Even if power plants are burning diesel, it could be possible that a plugin would be cheaper than putting petrol directly in the tank. A hybrid car also has other environmental, social and personal benefits that still make it a better choice than petrol cars, especially if you’re talking about putting hundreds of them on the road.
don’t worry in the next decade or so they’ll nail the hydrogen fuel cell. then all our cars will run on water.
@dodo
And we’ll be drinking whiskey.
Oh that doesn’t work. There’s water in whiskey.
Electric cars can only be the future of city, or second cars. Manufacturers simply can’t get much range out of them and they take around 8 hours to charge. Battery swapping’s interesting, but complicated and they are crazy expensive (and heavy).
Hybrids are great in town (zero emissions in traffic), but less efficient than diesels anywhere else. They will also be hugely expensive to maintain in the long term and consume many rare earth materials, which are environmentally damaging to mine and refine.
Hydrogen fuel cells seem to be the answer: they emit only water, have few moving parts (less likely to brake) and can have excellent range and performance. However, the technology to extract hydrogen’s in it’s infancy outside of Japan. SL might be great for this power plant type, given the huge demands for rain water.
Which leaves diesels, which can now provide high performance and low consumption, but still produce harmful particulates. Combine them with stop-start tech and they beat hybrids on performance and consumption. As far as I have seen, though, only Europeans can make decent diesels still, so that limits your choice.
BTW The argument about diesel power stations is silly when you think about it. The amount of energy used to get the fuel to the car must be added to the car’s actual efficiency, ie it uses more than one litre of fuel for each litre combusted in the engine. Electric cars remain low carbon vehicles when this is taken into account.
@shammi
I most cetainly do not have the kind of encyclopaedic knowledge some of these people have about hybrid cars. Please refer to their comments to learn about the case against those hybrid cars.
(Sigh) Just when I was beginning to get some idea about hybrid cars I’m confronted with a hydrogen fuel cell!
Isn’t it the cost effectiveness of breaking up the water molecule that’s the issue, and wasn’t there some hoax involving a local guy who claimed to have made a breakthrough?
I have reason to believe that that local guy shammi mentioned about is actually Dodo. So these days I’m developing what I call Patriotic Acid Cell Batteries. All you have to do is drink one litre of Kik Cola (pepsi, coca cola doesn’t work), wait two hours, and pee into the fuel tank. I can make this work. But I’ve got a problem. It’s not technical. It’s political. Feminists will sue my ass.
You might want to check your facts about the internal combustion engine being over 300 years old.
the first one was built in 1206
the first proper one 17th century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_internal_combustion_engine
Why not just convert a diesel car to use vegetable (eg Jatropha) oil. Called SVO use. note: This NOT the same as bio-diesel.
Excerpt.
In March 2005 we installed a single-tank SVO system from Elsbett Technologie in our TownAce (1990 Toyota TownAce 1.9-litre 4-cyl turbo-diesel 4×4 van). The kit includes modified injector nozzles, stronger glow plugs, dual fuel heating, temperature controls and parallel fuel filters, and it does just what it claims to do.
More here.
Straight vegetable oil as diesel fuel