Hybrids should be less expensive

I think your correspondent Christian Peregin should be congratulated for the balanced and well-researched article on how hybrid cars are more expensive after the budget (November 21).

I hold no brief for the hybrids' importers. Whether the Association of Car Importers in Malta intends to challenge the government's measures or not is their prerogative. But although the hybrids issue is definitely not the be all and do all of a budget that might not be as "green" as we were originally led to believe, I think that as a hybrid owner - rather than as an MP - the record should be put straight about hybrids, in the hope that the government will rethink its policy on these types of cars which at one stage the minister even dismissed lightly as "pollutants"!

In the UK, the former mayor of London had exempted them from the Congestion Tax while in Rome they are even being used as licensed taxis for a cleaner air quality.

For a period the federal government in the US had offered tax credits of up to $3,400 for hybrids while certain American states and corporations continue to offer such fiscal incentives to their employees who opt for them.

The government has shown that it is so out of sync with modern technology that it seems to have ignored the fact that in 20 or 30 years' time all the automotive group cars of certain brands will be hybrids and all makers will have hybrids too.

Because of their eco-friendliness several car manufacturers are desperately scrambling to catch up with certain known companies, by having already entered into licensing agreements that allow them to use certain makers' hybrid technology not to lag behind any further.

Environmentalists in the US and beyond have been long calling for more attractive tax incentives for citizens to buy more of these cars.

No matter what the minister claimed in Parliament these cars virtually use half the energy of a standard car. Nobody is claiming that hybrids do not pollute - it is just that they pollute less than conventional petrol/diesel-powered cars.

If the government seems - from what has been declared in the House - prepared to tweak certain measures hitting hard second-hand car importers, it should go back to the drawing board on the hybrids' issue.

It is already a leap of faith to actually get down to opting for such a type of car, but with its budgetary measures this government is turning it into a leap into the dark.