The Green Car Conundrum
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AutoNation Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mike Jackson shares his thoughts with The Wall Street Journal on why relatively low gas prices and pressure on auto manufacturers to produce (costly) green cars are working against each other. It's like "telling a shop owner who sells donuts and broccoli “you have to sell 50 percent broccoli — and we’re reducing the price of donuts,” Jackson told WSJ.
If you want to succeed in this endeavor, Jackson argues, you need to gradually increase the tax on gasoline.
To make higher pump prices palatable, the government could give consumers their money back at the end of the year, he said. It’s a proposal he makes often, and to little avail.
Jackson’s worry is that without higher gas prices AutoNation will get stuck trying to move fleets of cars with expensive fuel-saving technology that customers don’t want.
“It’s going to be a train wreck,” he said.
(Photo by frankh; C.C. 2.0)
