Featured Wisconsin yet again moving to add a special tax for Prius hybrids and plug ins

Some of the proposals above sound like good, common sense, solutions.

However, we all know how politics work...common sense rarely enters the picture. Campaign funds do.

 

It will be interesting to see how this Hybrid tax shows up in campaign funding. I am willing to bet in the future it could be something that the Republicans regret.

 

I'll bet they'll repeal it once hybrids and EV's start becoming a bigger share of vehicles on the roads and more voters start showing up at town halls, sending angry calls and letters to their politicians. Then the Republicans will claim "See? We got rid of this unfair tax!", that they of course, put into law in the first place.

I just hope this extra fee actually goes towards road maintenance, and not a general fund that gets used for non-road maintenance purposes. Otherwise why even have it in the first place, other than to punish a small minority that most people won't care about?

 

the current gas tax doesn't even go for road maintenance.

 

It Will go directly into to the Segregated highway transportation fund,

The R legislature passed a law sometime back the the locks the funds from being used for general fund expenditures because of what the previous Administration did in time of a budget crisis.

Gov Doyle used the the Surplus funds in the account 700-800 Million to cover general fund budget shortfalls when The economy collapsed in 2008. It was done using the Governors Veto power. It was know as the now infamous "Frankenstein Veto " where he modified the Budget bill sent to his office by Moving wording around within the bill to change the meaning of sentences.

 

Maybe your State Commingles gas taxes into the General fund.

Wisconsin does not. It is Truly Segregated Account. That has been running a Deficit for the last 9 years. So the Governor keeps Bonding(borrowing) to cover the annual budget. The current Bonding is 400 Million.

The Added Revenue from the Hybrid / EV surcharge will only bring in 8 Million based on current registration data.

 

we account for the revenue, but it's difficult to find detailed expenditures, and there's a mix of federal project requirements as well. some pays for repairs, some pays for debt service on road bonds, and a tad goes to fish and wildlife, from what i can google.
there was a proposal here in 2016 to tax miles, but i can't find the outcome, it must have been shut down.

 

Remember Fleischmann and Pons and Cold Fusion? The real story is that they stepped on some really big interests and got run out of the country. They went to France, and continued their research sponsored by no other than Toyota. Cold Fusion has been renamed to LENR, Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions, and is a continuing area of research. Just don't touch the precious high energy nuclear budget.

LENR is just one of several methods that are being researched to extract energy from water.

Stanley Meyers demonstrated an engine running on water, and patented the process. He was murdered in the middle of serious negotiations on commercializing his process. Attempts to duplicate his process by using the patent design have failed. So either it was a scam, or he didn't share the entire secret sauce required. If the technology didn't work, that would have been adequate demonstration that he could be dismissed. The search continues...

Another theory is to rectify thermal noise with an array of diodes. We already know how to make a sheet of diodes - it's called a LED flat panel display. So maybe a future iPhone will be powered by several sheets of diodes collecting energy, in addition to the sheet of LEDs used for display.

Any of these ideas might develop into actual products. Or maybe not. But it's too early to pick the winners and losers. Stanton Freidman offers examples of too early dismissals of quite a variety of technologies. Like "Why would one want to sit in front of a box watching pictures?", and "Of what use is a telephone if there is nobody to call?". And then there's the program of the Army-Navy Football game of November 29, 1941. "It is significant that despite the claims of air enthusiasts, no battleship has yet been sunk by bombs." At least not for another 8 days.

Recommended: "Science Was Wrong" by Stanton Friedman


The common aspect of all these new energy ideas is that the current tax structure doesn't work with them. Traditionalists have totally missed the possibilities of new ideas to their peril. When tax laws are built on specific technologies, they have to be revised every time there is a new one. It would be much fairer to establish a road tax based on road usage. Perhaps offer a tax advantage to technologies that offer environmental advantages, but base the advantage on performance rather than just examples of specific technology.

 

If we took every "this will change the world" claim seriously in regards to battery tech, the world would have been changed several dozen times over by now. There are hundreds of different prototypes of batteries that could theoretically solve all the world's energy problems, but the simplest commonality among all of them has nothing to do with taxes. They all had this in common: none of them worked when they tried to scale up to mass production. So instead, we continue to be working with gradual improvements to lithium ion. Because that works.

 

Here is something I just learned:

In the UK your road tax gets lower the more economical and clean your car is. I only pay $35 a year for my diesel BMW and have friends who pay no annual road tax for their hybrids. New, expensive gas guzzlers will have to pay well over $2,000 in road tax the first year, plus tax on all the fuel they burn. Wisconsin has it back to front.

 

The problem in Wisconsin is that it's a state with lots of rural voters, that drive inefficient vehicles (sometimes due to need, sometimes not). So, soaking the inefficient vehicles will cause voters to lash back against the politicians that do it.

 

Edison had how many failed attempts at a useful lightbulb? 1000 or so? If he'd stopped at 10, or 100, or whatever would we be without lightbulbs? I suspect that someone else would have eventually developed something similar because the technology was available at that time. Edison couldn't have developed LED lighting because the body of knowledge available at that time wasn't sufficient.

Water is generally regarded as a dispersant, certainly not a strongly reacting substance. But add some lithium to water and watch out! Researching how to convince water to release power seems rather promising.

 

Partly true, but an increasing number of rural Wisconsin voters are fed up with their local roads being in disrepair. They have contacted their local state representatives, many of whom are (Republican). Several of those Representatives have tried to move funding legislation forward. Its Our Gov. Walker who refuses to raise any broad based funding source to address the issue. As inflation and fuel efficiency erodes the the transportation funds buying power, he just wants to keep borrowing to cover the transportation budget deficit. He is positioning himself to run for a 3rd term in 2018 and another shot at the Presidency at some point.

Meanwhile he wants to leave a legacy with I-39/90 expansion from 4 to 6 lanes between Beloit and Madison, while leaving Rural State highways in a sad state of neglect. Overall our interstate highways are in good shape, at least the ones I drive on seem to be getting adequate rehabilitation and repairs in a timely fashion. However, the Interstates and US highways are also funded in large part with Federal dollars returned to the state from the 18.4 cent tax on gasoline and 24.4 cent tax on diesel fuel. The total WI state gas tax is 32.9 cents. This includes a 2 cent natural resources fund fee.

At this point this thread topic is a mute point now.

Now its just a waiting game to see when the new Fees go into effect. My Prius is up for renewal in November. Hopefully the fee doesn't take effect till January 1, 2018

 

Wow...major bummer that this passed. Especially the tax on hybrids. I hope fees like this do not spread to other states. I wonder if we will see more hybrids in the Wisconsin used market at some point once the word gets out.

This is obviously politically motivated and is clearly a way to disincentivize people away from these vehicles. Also seems like a way to stick it to 'democratic leaning' areas like Madison.

I thought this was interesting :

http://www.jsonline.com/story/opinion/columnists/emily-mills/2017/09/15/mills-legislatures-shortsighted-view-transportation/667715001/

And then there is the Foxconn debacle...which is going to affect the state budget for quite some time.

Scott Walker's Wisconsin Foxconn Deal Is Even Shadier Than It Sounds

 

Let me suggest that Georgia has the raw data to document the effect.

Bob Wilson

 

The Hybrid and EV rate increases take effect January 1, 2018.

So at least I’ll get my November renewal at the current $75 rate.

Next year will be a 100% increase. Looking sooo forward to that

 

Let’s hope the people of Wisconsin wise up and throw the bums out