In Japan, the tax cuts and the subsidies on eco-friendly vehicles became effective on April 1, 2009. Due to the schemes,
people would renew to a new car prior to the primary life time of a car. Thus, we examined the effect of CO
2 abatement by
front-loading replacing vehicles. In particular, we compared the CO
2 reduction due to the improvement of fuel efficiency to
the amount of CO
2 increase, whose factors are ‘rebound effect’ and ‘discharge of manufacturing vehicles’. We categorized
vehicles into six types, hatchback, minivan, hybrid vehicle (HV), saloon, light vehicle, and others (SUV, convertible). In the
case where consumers replace their cars to the following three types (hatchback, minivan, and HV), the CO
2 abatement
which divided consumers into household attributes in order to examine difference in expense was estimated. The result
showed that a household expenditure would increase due to tax cuts. In addition, if consumers except a single-person
household replace their vehicles about 1~10 years earlier than originally plan, there may be no reduction effect when
replacing with minivan and/or hatchback. Conversely, the net reduction effect only appears in a single-person household at
1~5 year earlier than originally plan and in case of replacing their cars to HV prior to the vehicle lifetime.
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