Buffett’s BYD Threatened by Prius in China Hybrid Shift

No.

Turn your demagoguery around to see why it is foolish: should the other 99% be sacrificed for the benefit of the few ?

 

/Define and clarify what "enable" means. SURELY you do not mean regulations that would cost the truck industry money.

 

You need to understand that in China the fuel price is set by government and as such right now the petrochemical companies cannot produce cleaner diesel within the cost constraints.
Therefore the government could enable the production of cleaner diesel by reducing the tax on it so no I don't mean at the cost of the truck industry

 

Suggesting that people's livelihood should not be sacrificed to satisfy an impractical scheme hardly constitutes demagoguery now does it.

 

^^ In other words, you want to remove a subsidy. No argument there, but you have to explain why the petro companies would have a profit motive to make low sulfur diesel. After all, the truckers just want to burn the least expensive sh1t around, right ?

 

It does when you frame the scheme as "impractical" without a decent argument to back up your assertion.

Clean(er) air is hardly impractical.

 

No the problem reported is that right now the petrochemical companies would essentially be making a loss on the cleaner stuff simply because the price of fuel is fixed by the governemnt. Therefore if the tax was reduced but the fuel price remained the same the companies could possibly manufacture the stuff cost affectively.

Having said that the reality is more likely to be the petrochem companies not wanting to erode their margins beyond where they currently are, but hey I don't have access to that detail eh lol

 

Thank you for the continuing interesting debate but I'm for bed now

 

quite a few people in China uses the brick like pieces of coal to not just cook but to heat up their homes in the winter time. .. Coal is every where in China and it is cheap too. Electricity is not everywhere in China and it isn't all that cheap either. China is all modern like in the cities but if go to the countryside things aren't alway so modern.

I think pushing for cleaner environment is a good thing. It's not something that can be done overnight though. I remember Washington DC in 1963-1967 when it was really dirty... it took a long time to clean it up... China's a big country and she's gotta start somewhere

 

Prius is outrageously overpriced in China. End of story.

Its pre-tax starting price is RMB 220,000-ish (about USD 35,500). In comparison, the Corolla is sold with a price tag of RMB 120,000 (USD 19,300).

Actually when the price is rationalized, Chinese car buyers do buy greens. A good example is CT200h. At a sale volume of around 1,500 per month, it's the 3rd best-seller in its segment in China (marginally behind Mini and BMW 1 series). CT is sold for RMB 270,000 (USD 43,500) in China, still considerably higher than in other markets, but Lexus managed to offset it by offering a 6-year warrant+free maintenance program, and a very attractive finance policy.

 

right, and as soon the tax is lowered, they could:
–continue making shitty gas and bring in more profits
–start making higher-quality gas and keep the same profits as before

hmmm…I wonder…really…which option would they choose?

tough one.

 

I don't think you've quite grasped the level of control the government have in China.
Anyway I was proposing that the tax be reduced on the cleaner stuff to make it cheaper than the alternative

 

We had them here in the UK when I was young. They are called briquettes and are simply compressed coal dust sometimes using a binder, tar etc

In fact it seems we still have them. Smokeless fuel

 

It maybe that if sufficient pressure is used, as in metal sintering, that a binder isn't required

 

No 'lives sacrificed' Pollution on the other hand...

Apparently you can't comprehend simple statements like " I will happily concede that that miniscule percentage needs a car in order to function in their job. So what?"

Plonk.

 

Your statement was "I am more concerned with the other 99.9948% of the Chinese people" implying that you are less concerned about the others. By the way there are 70,000 taxi drivers in Beijing not in the whole of China and this is only one trade that requires a car, van, truck to exist.

Where populations are large, what you refer to as minuscule percentages actually translates to volumes of people equal to that of small towns or can you not comprehend that?

The upshot here is that your proposal isn't really financially viable at this time in my opinion. I think if you took the time to do some research into the pollution situation in conjunction with the political and financial climate there at present you would start to understand that legislation that hits the man on the street is not a clever idea.
If the government enabled the cleaner diesel then pollution would start to fall very quickly without any financial impact on the man in the street.

If however you still feel that that the man in the street should foot the bill for the cleanup then if I were you I'd avoid a career in politics.

I have no clue what you mean by "Plonk"

 

Oh my god who would have thought that the concept of clean air is so controversial.

 

Just wait till the Pope gets drawn in