Featured EV road tax fees

I find it surprising that states with the fewest EVs are worried about a few thousand ev freeloaders out of millions of gas cars on their roads.

 

Part of the problem the legislators have no clue what it's all about.
If you write to them, you need to first explain there are Hybrids, Plug-in Hybrids, and full BEV's electrics.
Idaho is taxing all of them.
Michigan may have joined the Idaho list, not sure.
Most states that tax EV's have not added PHEV's as far as I know.

Most automakers agree (including Toyota) with a modest fee for EV's. Even Plug_in America agrees with that, though they request relief for some period to help grow the market.

Toyota suggests fees should be technology nuetral, in other words, let' say you have an ICE car that get's 40 MPG, and a 100% gaso hybrid that get's 40 MPG. The fact the word "hybrid" appears in the description should not qualify for extra fees against an equivalent gaso ICE. Idaho disagrees however.

Anyways on that above logic, PHEV maybe should be half of EV fee, but that's a fine point for regulators who do not know the differences.

Of course we fought that battle in VA and got the hybrid fees for a couple years before we killed it.

 

Until EVs are more than one tenth of a percent of cars on the road in flyover country there should not be fixed fees for ev ownership.
In Wisconsin there are still less than 5000 evs registered in the whole state.

Until there is broad acceptance why make more roadblocks to ev ownership?

Next the only fair way to charge road fees is a percentage on the fuel you use.

My volt uses $2.50 of electricity most weeks (including what my work pays for), gas tax is about 20% at the moment so I should pay about $0.55 of tax a week or about $25 a year, that would be fair.

Most proposals want to charge high fixed fees on EVs, so high that the fee exceeds the fuel cost of just driving a gas car.

You have to leave the person an out to save money on being more efficient. That's why gas tax works well. Otherwise why be efficient?
Just drive a school bus .

 

They'll drive us back to gassers, which is probably their end game.

 

So true! The legislators everywhere are always inexperienced things they legislate on. That went they pay vat sums to others who don't know, to find out for them. Their main focus of expertise is how they're doing in the polls!

 

That'll tell us who the real green warriors are!

 

We have the best government the oil companies can buy

 

Why is that the only "fair" way?
If I use 1000 kwh that I produce with my solar cells should I be taxed the same as someone who uses the same quantity from a coal plant?

Wouldn't it be more "fair" if based on miles driven? Or miles driven for a given vehicle class/weight? (as a proxy for road damage)?

Mike

 

+1!
Damage comes from miles driven compounded by weight. In states with annual inspections, that should be very easy to implement. In other states, they'd need to come up with a way to verify the miles. Most of the damage comes from trucks. We'd have a lot less damage and congestion if we could get back to trains for long distance cargo transport. I did a little googling and found this paper from 2012: http://facweb.knowlton.ohio-state.edu/pviton/courses2/crp776/776-roads-handout.pdf Here's a screen shot of the part that caught my eye.

 

For those states with annual inspections, I believe they usually record the odometer reading.

 

Our state encourages doing that online.

 

Note how low the passenger car value is, and that might be averaged with minivan and SUV passenger cars.

 

Absolutely not, that form of taxation should never be applied to private cars and should be banned. It is ripe for fraud and special interest manipulation. If such a thing were to pass, semis and other heavy weights would find their way to becoming except.
All current per mile legislation has been fully funded and supported by transport companies, no doubt they expect to pay less after such laws are enacted.

In my mind
NO EV SHOULD BE PAYING ROAD TAX UNTIL THEY ARE WIDELY ADOPTED.

Further that EVs are such a small percentage of cars and the fact they are too small to cause any significant road damage means they belong except for a good long time. 10 or 20 years from now when EVs make up 10 or 20 percent of cars only then should we have discussion.

If in twenty years we decide to get road tax from EVs...

Stick and carrot.
Should you not be given motivation to do the right thing? Just because you use solar doesn't give you free reign to be wasteful of energy. It takes fossil fuels to make solar panels after all.

My assumption is that your average cost per Kw used from the utility +self produced (since you produce your own energy) is likely lower than your neighbor and your road tax burden would be lower because your per kw cost is lower.
Likewise if your off grid your burden should be zero.

When systems to track people's movements for taxation purposes have been evaluated they always cost millions of dollars (on just a small state) for new administrative costs. Let alone millions on new technology. Implementing mileage tracking mechanisms nationwide with the administrative cost could cost trillions.
Gas tax as it stands can only be bypassed legally by saving fuel, mileage based taxation on private cars should be banned for many reasons not least of which is because there would be zero motivation to drive economically and further that a 600hp 1800lb sports car would cost as much road tax as a 70 mpg insight to drive that encourages bad behavior, you should have to pay more to make poor decisions and behave badly.

The cost to track everyone exceeds the amount collected, so such systems are ineffective compared to straight gas tax which is apart of the sales tax system and costs effectively nothing additional to run over just collecting sales tax

Just because you selfishly want to make the coal guy pay more is it worth making everyone pay three times more just to cover the costs of the new inefficient taxation system?

 

But you assume that everyone agrees on what the right thing is. Which sadly isn't true.

 

You are putting forth an argument that I did not make.
I am not in favor of tracking where people go.
But I would be OK with counting total miles.

This is very easily done...here is one way that it "could" work:
When you renew your vehicle license you get a bill based on your car's weight and an estimated number of miles you drove the past year...say 10K or 15K miles, and listing your estimated odometer reading. If you are OK with that number you pay it. If you drove significantly more you can volunteer the higher number and pay it (and it would up your estimate for the next year). If you drove fewer miles you can go to a certified location and have it adjusted. (Done at DMV, inspection stations, smog check, etc. Could also use AAA or similar. Dealers could do this too...they would love to show you new models while they enter the data)

Sure, people could try and cheat. But when the car is sold the odometer reading and paid taxes have to match up. You are allowed some variance, but fined a modest amount if you are more than 15 or 20% different, besides current year miles.

Very low cost and not tracking anyone. No GPS, No devices in cars. Just a few lines of code for the DMV.

Everyone should pay something for the roads. But I agree that EVs should not have to pay until there are a significant number of them. Until then we provide an incentive to buy EVs. Instead increase the gas taxes by enough to make up the lost revenue from the few percent EVs not paying gas taxes.

Politicians: be honest. Compute the actual lost taxes based on EVs sold. Be upfront, increase gas taxes by 1 cent or 2 cents of whatever the number is for your state and say this is what it is for. And like in math class...show your work.


Mike

 

This plan is just a variant of using odometer readings for the fee. One in which those that use the roads more can skirt on their fair share, and those that use them less have to go through hoops to get a refund. This might road for states in which inspections are less often than once a year. They collect a small amount from everyone each year to maintain a steady revenue amount, and then refund or tax more when the car is finally inspected. If annual inspections and odometer readings are already in place, Just assess the tax amount off the odometer and collect it then. States without any inspections should probably have at least a basic safety one.

The difference in weight between a small car and large one has virtually no impact on road wear. Pa calls SUVs station wagons, and charge them the car rate for annual registration while small, lighter weight pick ups have to pay the higher truck rate. I would expect the same to happen if vehicle weight or class was a factor in any per mile road tax.

 

That is exactly what it is.
Do you have a better way to collect road taxes? Especially some day in the future when a large percentage of cars don't use gas?

What it isn't is:
- a way to build a big new government program with lots of overhead
- a way to create a lot of data people may want to keep private
- a way to enrich device makers for no good reason

Mike

 

Some people would summarize that as anti-business. Lobby paid politicians would never allow it.