The Province of Ontario already collects odometer readings when registering a vehicle or renewing license plates; so the renewal/registration software can do the calculation easily.

Regarding putting the tax at the pump: Some studies suggest that fuel taxes move the cost of the tax to oil producers instead of consumers. A fee on fuel consumption levied on the drivers (vehicle consumers) will more likely be felt on vehicle producers than fuel suppliers.

borderinsane:
Interesting idea, but I don’t see states going through the extra paper work to do that at registration time. If you want a punitive fuel tax, put it on the fuel.

What if someone owns a trailer queen Ferrari, that they just take to track events. For the 500 miles they put on it, they would be getting way less than what the sticker says for mpg. On the other end, you punish people that actually maintain their cars and drive sensibly to consume less gas, the same as those that carry around 500# of crap in the back seat and have all their tires under inflated by 10 PSI.

I’m not sure how BMW, Mercedes and others allocate the fines amongst their various models.

An older list of fines collected through 2004 is here:

http://www.nhtsa.gov/cars/rules/CAFE/FINES-COLLECTED-SUMMARY.html

Interestingly enough, Jaguar and Volvo are both on that list pre-Ford purchase, but not after. GM and Ford never show up on it.

If you want to look up any particular vehicle just use the carsdirect.com site to price out the car you are curious about. Any gas guzzler tax will show up as a line item in the options area with it already checked off.

I’m not an environmentalist nor a fan of taxation; but I really think that a gas guzzler tax based on estimated fuel consumed by the vehicle levied on a car owner at registration (for every year the car is registered) (and instead of at the gas pump where it is subsumed to a higher gas price) would change consumer habits — something like USD2.00 a gallon.

So, a 2007 Mercedes-Benz S600 gets about 13 MPG (per fueleconomy.gov). If the driver put 25,000 miles on the car in the year, the vehicle would have consumed about 1,900 gallons in fuel for the year. For July 2007, the API calculated the US national average per-gallon fuel tax at USD0.47/gal. For 1,900 gallons of fuel that represents ~USD900 in taxes paid.

USD900 in fuel taxes kinda puts that USD7.50 NHTSA fee in perspective, eh?

But, lets say that when the S600 owner went to re-register the car he was required to pay an additional USD3,800 in fees based on his estimated 1,900 gallons of fuel consumption. Now, a whopping USD3,800 at registration would change car buying and driving habits and pretty damn quick.

What is the per vehicle fine for the other companies?

Economists have given considerable thought to this question. If the market won’t allow price increases, then consumers won’t be paying the tax. Labor might bear some of the burden through shrinkage of current compensation/benefits or smaller pay raises in the future. But if neither consumers or labor take the hit, then shareholders bear the tax. I’d suppose the impact of more taxes on the Detroit 2.8 will be shared by labor and capital, though in some unknown ratio. Chrysler is in no position to raise prices.

In the long run, of course, the effects of additional taxation ripple all through the economy: less investment, fewer jobs, less consumer spending, etc. But that’s another complicated topic. And as Keynes observed, in the long run we are all dead.

Who is actually going to pay the fine, Daimler, Chrysler or some combination? I’m sure Chrysler doesn’t need this right now.

My guess is it’s dependent on how many models each nameplate has that affect the CAFE numbers, and that the responsibility will be distributed accordingly. Chrysler is extremely SUV-heavy, and even their small cars don’t get stellar numbers (recently rented a 3.5L Chrysler Sebring that averaged 22.8 over 400 miles, with around 90% of the miles being highway cruise-control miles), but there’s something to be said for 6.3L supercharged AMG engines and 3.5L V6s that get 19 mpg combined in the C-Class.

That said, it seems pointless to fine Ferrari… I wonder what’ll happen after Porsche buys VW?

Perhaps they will (eventually, maybe, theoretically) use Tesla production to offset their low average mpg numbers? And let’s not forget that they’ve got deep (Malaysian) pockets backing them in the form of Proton.

Probably a fair part of it went to West Virginia, to build something and name it after Robert C. Byrd.

As a West Virginian, this made me laugh rather hard. I thought it was mostly an inside joke, but, yes, there are far too many things named after that man.

I agree that there should be more than simple fines that can be written off as CDB line-items during the fiscal year. If the government wants this to mean something, they have to make it mean something.

But, then, we are talking about the US government.

That said, it seems pointless to fine Ferrari… I wonder what’ll happen after Porsche buys VW?

The purchasers of Daimler products. Who do you think pays business taxes? The costs are just passed through to the consumer.

Probably a fair part of it went to West Virginia, to build something and name it after Robert C. Byrd.

It’s an interesting problem, and I think reveals the weakness of government mandated limits. Is Ferrari supposed to develop a econo car? Or Hummer, or Aston Martin? To be successful it demands that manufacturers become bland Toyotahomogenous type of corporations.

There are better options, like eliminating foreign oil management; saves taxes, increases the cost of oil, together making alternative energy sources more affordable.

A bizzare quirk of federal law put the NHTSA in charge of this when CAFE was invented. The why I don’t know!

It seems to me that it is time to up the ante on CAFE enforcement beyond fines. How about not letting them sell more cars?

edgett,
No doubt. It’s in some bureaucrat’s new boat or designer shoes like the DC official who stole enough to spend $1.5 million at Neiman Marcus.

… or charge more for their cars.