Welcome
to Exhaust Notes, our self-titled, semiregular roundup of automotive
bits and pieces from around the Web. Unlike other posts on this blog,
these are truly notes -- stories too short to deserve a full post but
worth a few moments of your precious time.This
week, the feds call for a mileage tax and don't take it back, GM is
reuniting with Isuzu, and journalists stare at a driverless Audi A7 parking itself in Las Vegas. Ready to be charged by the mile?
In February 2009, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood shot off a zinger that immediately got zapped by the White House. LaHood had suggested a federal mileage tax that would allow the government to track odometer readings and send an automated bill to every American driver. That's not exactly what he said, but it's exactly what he meant. One day after he was quoted suggesting the tax, former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said charging drivers by the mile "is not and will not be the policy of the Obama administration."
Well, nearly four years later, that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. LaHood is quiet, but now the Government Accountability Office is in full favor of levying a tax ranging from 0.9 cents to 2.2 cents per mile. The problem, says the GAO, is the declining highway budget that needs $110 billion to stay afloat in the next nine years. A bigger problem is that all of the fuel-efficient cars we're buying -- which is what the government had wanted us to do in the first place with the toughest CAFE laws on record -- have resulted in less money being collected through federal fuel taxes.
But according to the GAO, the only way to save our highways is to enact this new tax, or increase the gas tax -- which hasn't been raised since 1993 -- to at least 31.6 cents per gallon. Joy!
A new GM-Isuzu pickup?
