Keep your Prius=Looks we're getting a GAS PRICE INCREASE

Im fine with this if they place guidelines on when, who and how much local entities like states can charge for wheel and registration fees, especially if they require these fees to be based on something real like age, weight or dimensions not on subjective differences like they are now (aka paint color, drivetrain, etc)

 

Classic conformist trying to use outdated revenue generation tactics rather than new more innovative ones... Sec. of Transportation has always been the ultimate slush fund distribution job. Whoever gets that gig is the golden child of the political party that put them in that position.

 

So just to keep up with inflation they'd have to bump the gasoline excise tax to about 33.1¢ per gallon. I'd support going higher, there's a lot of bridge and surfacing projects under my wheels that need more maintenance. Probably best to do it while oil is still so cheap.

 

Yeah new innovations like my state raising the title+registration $665 for certain car owners and talking of more fixed fee increases and more wheel tax

 

i have no problem with it, if they dedicate it to infrastructure. that's why i have driven prius for 17 years.

on the flip side, we need to discourage land barges.

 

Since I drive fuel efficient cars I prefer the gas tax increase than registration taxes. Virginia is now charging new highway use fee only on fuel efficient vehicles. Tax is calculated on 85% of the difference between the amount of fuel tax on a vehicle that gets the average 23.7 mpg and the amount of fuel tax on a more fuel-efficient vehicle. In other words if you drive a 15mpg SUV you pay no tax but a Prius pays additional annual tax.

In the future a tax based on miles driven will be replace the gas tax (more electric cars etc). Most states record the annual mileage at inspections but some states still do not. But soon this also will change.

 

glad my odometer is broken and my ancient cars are registration exempt.

Fuel economy taxes need to be banned at the federal level to reinforce that they are a feigned difference that is being exploited to bamboosel people into subsidizing commercial vehicles.

 

I HOPE that was a typo!

 

Citation please! I had not heard of this.

 

Before bonking another member with a "citation please", sometimes a wee Google search can lay one's questions to rest....

Indiana has been hitting me with an extra registration fee for having a hybrid, for a few years now.

 

Are these the same critics who oppose (nearly) all taxes, all the time?

"Don’t tax you,
Don’t tax me,
Tax that fellow behind the tree."

If we are going to enjoy any services or infrastructure, we need to pay for it.

 

Those critics are fine with large fixed fees on hybrids and regressive economy taxes


Glad you feel that way, so Taxis, dock to stock, giant non - road going vehicles that drive everyday on the road should pay some road tax no?

 

I am in Virginia! Apparently it was snuck in but fortunately it will not hit me until next year. Not sure about my Prius-driving son.

 

Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles
The idea of the new tax is to try to recover some “gas tax” loses from electric and fuel efficient vehicles so all roadway users pay for construction and maintenance equitably. I disagree because a heavy 6000 lbs SUV create 16 times more pavement damage than a light Prius. CITATION: How Much Damage Do Heavy Trucks Do to Our Roads? | Inside Science

 

Yeah Virginia only has 6500 BEVs registered in state, so yeah it doesn’t recover anything.

the new tax is to only rip off hybrid owners which do make up a significant percentage of drivers 5%
Sadly another law that violates equal protection laws that ban taxation on feigned drivetrain differences to benefit commercial operators

 

True there are not many electric vehicles yet. Everyone is projecting that soon we will have a large percentage of electric vehicles and they try to find a new tax to replace the gas tax.

However, as most gen 2 Prius owners know already there is big issue in general with electric vehicles. The BATTERY replacement cost!

If the battery fails after 12 years the replacement cost would be almost equal to the market price of the electric car. In other words that would be the time to total the electric vehicle. In some car models people would find ways to replace battery modules but with Tesla, leaf, i3, volt and bolt this is becoming way more difficult.

 

Compared to 80,000+ pound commercial trucks, even that "heavy" SUV is negligible. Mouse nuts. It adds much more to congestion than to road wear, just like a light Prius.

And congestion leads to a need to build more lanes, unneeded by trucks alone. And these lanes will add to aging and weather deterioration maintenance needs.


"“The damage due to cars, for practical purposes, when we are designing pavements, is basically zero. It’s not actually zero, but it’s so much smaller -- orders of magnitude smaller -- that we don’t even bother with them,” said Karim Chatti, a civil engineer from Michigan State University in East Lansing."

For this purpose, that SUV still counts as a car.

 

yep, but legally your stance is irrelevant since states can and do legally tax vehicles with minor weight differences different registration fees, weight is a truly measurable difference at a scale and isn’t technically feigned,
my state has had random pickup fees in small brackets starting at 4000lb+ On up as long as license plates have existed.

To your point congestion, Similarly dimensions of a car could be taxed as measurable but likewise taxing a hybrid an additional tax for congestion is illegal if only hybrids pay “congestion tax” and again hybrid congestion devolves into a feigned difference.

Fuel economy taxes are a slippery slope due to how they are “measured /compared “ and the fact most people get the lowest fuel economy when they never use highways which are supposedly what these fund, such a tax is open to lawsuits, since my 40mpg car is taxed for a highway fee but I only get actually get 19mpg in the real world and never touch a highway.
Feigned Taxation on such things as a transmission type or paint color are just as illegal as charging a religion tax or a gender tax or a home beauty tax, and believe me without law being enforced against feigned differences you would inevitably see laws made to harass

 

My state also charges a weight fee, but for all cars, not just pickups, even under 4000 pounds. But the price for them is tiny compared to commercial trucks.

$25 up to 4000 pounds, $45 up to 6000 pounds, $3400 for the heaviest permitted commercial trucks at 105,500 pounds. Not even close to a linearly proportional scale.

My point about congestion is solely that cars still create the need for more roads and more lane capacity, and various other costs. Even if cars create no weight damage at all, those extra roads and lanes cost money to build and to maintain as they suffer wear and damage from weather and age and need various facilities to minimize or reduce crash casualties.

Weight, the critical factor on heavy trucks, is not the only reason why roads need money. Trying to apportion highway taxes exclusively by weight damage, is an attempt to shift taxes to "not you, not me, but to that fellow behind the tree".

Everything else you bring up are your own points, unrelated to anything I was talking about.

So your car operates exclusively on private land, never on public roads?

Remember that for this purpose, "highway" is any public road. That includes residential streets.