25 March 2009
ECONOMY or ECOLOGY
According to most of media, we are in depression once in a century. Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mazda and other automotive makers are suffering with this depression. Sales of cars in Japan marked the lowest since 1979. But Honda’s new eco-friendly car Insight received over 10 thousand of orders. Insight is eco-friendly and it is an economy car. It is cheaper than Prius (Toyota’s eco-friendly car).
Most of countries are announcing their policy to boost the economy. In Japan, the government decided to provide 12,000 yen (about 120 USD)to all of Japanese person. (20,000 yen (about 200 USD) for kids and elder person)
Also they decided to special deal of using express way with ETC. (ETC is electronic toll collection systems. If you use ETC, you don’t have to stop your car at toll gate.) If we use ETC and drive our car on express way, we don’t have to pay more than 1,000 yen (about 10 USD). This special deal is only for private use car and only on holidays. I think it is good for car users to go to trip.
According to the JITA (Japan Electronics Information Technology Industries Association), February’s sales of ETC was 45% more than its sales in January. Yes, many people are buying this to get the special deal. This policy is effective for most of car users in Japan. But this policy is not good for business drivers. They must pay usual toll even they are using ETC. I think, it is not good. The government should act for business drivers too.
By the way, today’s title “ECONOMY or ECOLOGY”. This special deal is good for economy. But how about for ecology? ETC users are increasing day by day. And most of them will use express way more than before. They will drive their car to go to trip with using express way. Then I think, amount of exhaust gas would increase rapidly. Most of ecologist are saying this exhaust gas is one of cause of the global warming. Of course, most of them are driving eco-friendly cars like Insight and Prius, it is not so bad. But most of people are driving old and not fuel-efficient cars, I think.
So, what should we do? Buy the expensive eco-friendly car?
For ecology, the government decided to aid for eco-friendly car buyers. It is good deal for rich person who are planning to buy eco-friendly car. Most of cars’ prices are including tax of course. But this is aid to reduce its tax. I heard, if you buy Prius or Insight, you don’t have to pay tax price. The government believe that this aid would boost the sales of eco-friendly car more. But I don’t think so. Because most of eco-friendly cars are expensive than other cars because these cars including new technology. Then we are in depression, most of people are not planning to buy new car, I think. Some rich person would buy these eco-friendly cars but most of us wouldn’t buy it...
But it is good aid for rent-a-car companies. If these companies would stock these eco-friendly cars, some people that can’t buy eco-friendly cars would rent it like me. I don’t have plan to buy eco-friendly car because I don’t have to drive car so many time. But if I have a time to drive a car, I wanna rent eco-friendly car:)
Thank you.
Good day & Peace and Smile!
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