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When you have the population density and city pollution levels they have in big Indian cities, I don't blame them for trying to discourage the use of petrol. Even if you don't believe in climate change, there's real haze over many of their cities which has well documented effects on respiratory health.
The price elasticity of fuels is famously low. So, increasing the price of fuel by 10% will not lead to a 10% reduction in consumption.
The government knew this and doesn't claim that these are meant to reduce fuel consumption. Besides, it's not like much of India has decent public transport.
The high taxes are not meant to reduce consumption but shore up revenue. The Indian government slashed corporate tax rates last year. And revenues from GST were lower than expected because of the shutdowns imposed to contain the pandemic.
Here are two very well written articles by Vivek Kaul which explain the high prices in great detail:
It has nothing to do with climate change though. Fuel is very price inelastic , i.e. higger price doesn't reduce consumption that much. higher fuel prices adversely affect the poor a lot more .
This tax is largely because despite all the buzz on growth and economic policy ( demonitization etc) the current government is completely incompetent (last wasn't that much better either) to actually increase tax collection.
Very few indians pay tax - only salaried employees really , that's a small percentage of the population.
Also taxing fuel that high is going to also force people to use less clean fuel like wood etc that will negatively impact pollution
A “very poor person” in an Indian context doesn’t own a car.
A lot of people in India use scooters and motorcycles.
The transition to electric scooters is happening. There are a few local companies in the space. They tend to be a lot easier to manufacture than electric cars.
Ola's electric scooter got a lot of bookings, hope it's good enough to replace a petrol scooter
Ather, Hero and TVS already have electric scooters, but they are not much known in the market rn.
I'm an avid fan of EVs, but a lot of issues are still there.
For eg, Ola hasn't made a single delivery yet. Also it is too costly for poor people. Forget delivery, they haven't even kept a single vehicle for test drive
Poor people in India struggle with eating twice a day, the ones who have to choose between grocery and medicine don't have 100k to give Ola for an electric 2 wheeler.
The price of petrol 2 wheelers is also shooting up.
Also range is a big issue as is the availability of chargers and electricity in general.
I read an interview in a newspaper where a daily wage labourer / small office worker said that he earned 500INR daily and has to travel 10km on his petrol bike and it's getting difficult to have any savings. I think.his exact words were "Can't explain to my kid why I didn't bring him any food item or a toy. I just don't have enough money as majority goes in petrol"
Also ruling party ministers have made bizzare claims like "only 5% ppl use petrol"
Ola has no prior auto manufacturing experience, they are already delayed [1], their ability to deliver sales, or after sales support and do local manufacturing is as yet unproven.
Tesla came very close to collapse when they couldn't scale few times. Ola's success and the market appetite for e-bikes remains to be seen.
India's shift to electric is driven by fuel cost conscious buying rather than by climate consciousness, that means Ola (and others) do not have the support that Tesla enjoyed when their product was(still is?) not on par with ICE car from ideological buyers .
These scooters also will not be able to command a large premium to current prices and also do the volume to make in-roads in the market. There is a reason that electric is less than 1% of the market.
My uninformed estimate is that market can realistically only pick up significantly when battery chemistry evolves enough to make a decent range (> 150+ Miles) scooter priced at < $1,500 US . I have not read anything on how Ola or others are actually making batteries cheaper or better range like with say Tesla's 4680.
[1] Not unexpected or surprising for a very new player
Yes, its funny people think its about tackling climate change and encouraging people to use petrol/diesel alternatives. When in reality there is none present and people still have to commute everyday to work in petrol/diesel vehicles.
Now... my granddad was a miner after the second world war, and he commuted roughly 20 km (one way) every day by bicycle and even rode from the Ruhr region in Germany to Austria on it(no fancy mountainbike or roadbike, just an old "Vaterland")...
I really really wanted to buy a 2 wheeler EV 3yrs ago. But the only available option was Okinawa bike that went barely 50km in one charge. I now have a 3yr old petrol 2 wheeler that I need to get rid of until I have some sensible options in EVs. Ola, simple energy won't make a delivery in a fewmonths and they're over booked as hell. And current vehicles have too short range (less than 80km actual)
Currently the only affordable 4wheeler ev in India is Nexon EV at 150k INR. MG has an ev at 250k INR and Hundai too at 250K INR
Prices need to come down. Charging stations need to be set up + batteries should last for a long time
Yeah but when petrol taxes are high, people buy more efficient cars. Super obvious if you look at a street in France versus in the United States, where so many poor people have 20mpg cars.
Is it? Net price if 1l petrol is around 40 euro cent. At the gas station you can get one Liter for 160 cents. As I’m writing the cheapest price is 168 cents.
Make it transparent.
Redesign the public machinery so that it rewards reporting on corruption and nepotism. Make it a career move to oust bad apples. He who reports his bosses corruption, gets his job.
Same for monopolistic practices. Report them, become CEO of the busted off Company part. We can engineer processes for anything, we can design them to produce lean, mean state-machines grinding the bad actors inside to dust.
In a lot of parts of the world, trying to fight it can put you in some bad people's crosshairs. At the very least, nothing gets done because "at least X was improved"
TRIZ states, if your machinery starts to cease functioning, you design it to self destruct and be replaced with functioning machinery. A ablative material.
This whole "cant-do-nothing" John-Galt mental laziness is a scourge on the political climate and debate. I rather hang around with a bunch of stoners who get stuff done and be constructive, then this bards singing praise of corporate mini-kingdoms deriding the lands outside falling apart because the king does not pay taxes to the emperor.
You’re expecting an audience with a lot of power if you’re asking such things. I don’t think the majority of the readers of this comment can afford to take such risks, and if they do it’s unlikely to get them anywhere. Power corrupts. What do you mean you can engineer processes? How will you get anybody to follow your rules? Your comment ranges from naïve to unhinged.
Its correct, that moving "within" the system, changes are not possible.
You could create a one-purpose-party, which has a updated "constitution" as proposal with a feature freeze on the proposal, that fixes the flaws. Then gather the votes and fix it.
The eldest democracy we have right now is 300 years old, changes are possible - and patch is welcome.
I think inflation has increased across the board since the pandemic. Countries all over have pumped in unprecedented amount of money into their economies so this was bound to happen. Governments seem to be downplaying the numbers to some extent but people are starting to feel the real impact. I wonder if such cash injections into the economy are useful even and if they create a net good in the long run?
I see people here saying poor saying poor people don't have cars or it's for climate change. Increase in oil prices have affected public transportation and mainly cost of goods by 30-40% because of transportation cost and poor people are getting hurt :(
I think the biggest issue is that the income tax base in India is very small. India has 4x the population of US but individual taxpayers are 1/15 of the US. Most of the people do not pay taxes and the government has to make up the lost revenue somehow - petrol and diesel are the only taxes that can target large swaths of the population.
A majority of the Indian population is still in agriculture and agricultural income is not taxed.
Also small stores that deal in cash also avoid taxes.
Another thing about India is that every election is won by politicians guaranteeing free stuff for the masses - but that money for the free stuff has to come from somewhere - and that is why they need to tax fuel.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadIf you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
The government knew this and doesn't claim that these are meant to reduce fuel consumption. Besides, it's not like much of India has decent public transport.
The high taxes are not meant to reduce consumption but shore up revenue. The Indian government slashed corporate tax rates last year. And revenues from GST were lower than expected because of the shutdowns imposed to contain the pandemic.
Here are two very well written articles by Vivek Kaul which explain the high prices in great detail:
https://vivekkaul.com/2021/06/17/petrol-and-diesel-prices-ar...
https://vivekkaul.com/2021/07/14/whats-the-real-story-behind...
I used to pay 10rs for a shared auto per 5km, now it's gone to 15/20.
Public transport aka buses are still cheap but number of busses and their frequency is low
This tax is largely because despite all the buzz on growth and economic policy ( demonitization etc) the current government is completely incompetent (last wasn't that much better either) to actually increase tax collection.
Very few indians pay tax - only salaried employees really , that's a small percentage of the population.
Also taxing fuel that high is going to also force people to use less clean fuel like wood etc that will negatively impact pollution
A lot of people in India use scooters and motorcycles.
The transition to electric scooters is happening. There are a few local companies in the space. They tend to be a lot easier to manufacture than electric cars.
For eg, Ola hasn't made a single delivery yet. Also it is too costly for poor people. Forget delivery, they haven't even kept a single vehicle for test drive
Poor people in India struggle with eating twice a day, the ones who have to choose between grocery and medicine don't have 100k to give Ola for an electric 2 wheeler.
The price of petrol 2 wheelers is also shooting up.
Activa cost 40k INR jjst 7yrs ago. Today it's touching 100k INR.
Also range is a big issue as is the availability of chargers and electricity in general.
I read an interview in a newspaper where a daily wage labourer / small office worker said that he earned 500INR daily and has to travel 10km on his petrol bike and it's getting difficult to have any savings. I think.his exact words were "Can't explain to my kid why I didn't bring him any food item or a toy. I just don't have enough money as majority goes in petrol"
Also ruling party ministers have made bizzare claims like "only 5% ppl use petrol"
Tesla came very close to collapse when they couldn't scale few times. Ola's success and the market appetite for e-bikes remains to be seen.
India's shift to electric is driven by fuel cost conscious buying rather than by climate consciousness, that means Ola (and others) do not have the support that Tesla enjoyed when their product was(still is?) not on par with ICE car from ideological buyers .
These scooters also will not be able to command a large premium to current prices and also do the volume to make in-roads in the market. There is a reason that electric is less than 1% of the market.
My uninformed estimate is that market can realistically only pick up significantly when battery chemistry evolves enough to make a decent range (> 150+ Miles) scooter priced at < $1,500 US . I have not read anything on how Ola or others are actually making batteries cheaper or better range like with say Tesla's 4680.
[1] Not unexpected or surprising for a very new player
t.hackernews
Currently the only affordable 4wheeler ev in India is Nexon EV at 150k INR. MG has an ev at 250k INR and Hundai too at 250K INR
Prices need to come down. Charging stations need to be set up + batteries should last for a long time
I assure you they don't own cars with low mileage.
We've gone down in rankings for Hunger for Christ's sake. There is actual penury here.
This electric vehicle/expensive fuel trend will fuck poor people in every country.
This is like the French queen saying, "if they cannot afford bread, why don't they eat cake?"
1. Daily expense increases for commuters
2. An already weak public transport becomes expensive for commuters
3. Cost of almost everything increases (our logistics are road heavy)
4. Income of individuals are not increasing, so above 3 are going to hurt a lot more
Fuel taxes in Germany are €0.6545 per litre for conventional unleaded petrol, plus Value Added Tax (19%) on the fuel itself and the Fuel Tax.
so the 19% VAT is 30cents + 65 cents petrol tax is 95 cents in total for tax
the remaining 65 cents are for fuel price and profit
so it's more like 150%-200% but not 300%
I can't vouch for the accuracy of either of these sites but they have nice historical price charts:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/603701/diesel-fuel-price...
https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/gasoline-prices
Italy also doesn't seem to be even close to 180%: https://tradingeconomics.com/italy/gasoline-prices
Make it transparent. Redesign the public machinery so that it rewards reporting on corruption and nepotism. Make it a career move to oust bad apples. He who reports his bosses corruption, gets his job.
Same for monopolistic practices. Report them, become CEO of the busted off Company part. We can engineer processes for anything, we can design them to produce lean, mean state-machines grinding the bad actors inside to dust.
This whole "cant-do-nothing" John-Galt mental laziness is a scourge on the political climate and debate. I rather hang around with a bunch of stoners who get stuff done and be constructive, then this bards singing praise of corporate mini-kingdoms deriding the lands outside falling apart because the king does not pay taxes to the emperor.
You could create a one-purpose-party, which has a updated "constitution" as proposal with a feature freeze on the proposal, that fixes the flaws. Then gather the votes and fix it.
The eldest democracy we have right now is 300 years old, changes are possible - and patch is welcome.
Diesel is used to transport goods across the country so heavy taxes on Petrol will soon raise prices across the board for ALL items.
I guess all trucks use diesel
A majority of the Indian population is still in agriculture and agricultural income is not taxed.
Also small stores that deal in cash also avoid taxes.
Another thing about India is that every election is won by politicians guaranteeing free stuff for the masses - but that money for the free stuff has to come from somewhere - and that is why they need to tax fuel.
India has double taxpayers now compared to when Congress rules.
It's not like suddenly people stopped paying income tax during current govt