Why is it incumbent on the EV owners to somehow solve the blatantly and deliberately incorrect means of charging people to use roads?
This is like saying “the movie theater makes money by charging to park a car in the parking lot, but you walked to the theater, so how is it fair that you get to watch the movie for free?” Well, perhaps the movie theater should come up with some slightly less ridiculous way of charging for entrance.
Or if governments had decided to fund road maintenance using a tax on car paint, would it be unfair to buy a car that isn’t painted?
And what about people who use gasoline and diesel for things other than automobiles on public roads? That’s also unfair.
I don't understand the opposition to this. These vehicles continue to use roads but don't pay any taxes that would help maintain roads if they were gas or diesel cars. How is that fair?
What you propose is a good thing (to me), but there's an aspect of this that seems to be missing in all dialog about EVs: fuel tax.
My understanding is that a large portion of roads and associated infrastructure are funded by fuel taxes (which seems to be fair: the more you use them the more you pay).
I've yet to see an equitable solution to this problem.
I don't agree with the language you used but EV drivers are not paying the taxes that were levied to maintain roads. And obviously the EV's use the roads.
I know that this sounds unfair/bad - but it brings up something I never thought about with EVs. With many states a huge portion of the taxes that support the road infrastucture comes from the gas taxes. With EVs not filling up at the pump - how can states ensure they pay their share to keep the roads maintained?
Gas taxes are nice because they ensure that even people travelling into your state help pay for the roads they are using. If you just charge higher tax at registration you can't capture any of that revenue.
> gas "tax" helps pay for road building and maintenance. These cars are still using the roads and still expect more to be built. the money has to come from somewhere...
That's the point: I'm not saying that EVs shouldn't pay for their fair share of road maintenance. But the hike heavily implies that's not the case here: EVs are paying more than their non-electric counterparts (see the math in the post you're replying to). And not just a little more, several times more.
These moves always come out of some sense of unfairness about electric vehicles not paying gasoline tax. However, we want people to stop using gasoline, and it makes no sense to punish people for doing a net good thing for society by abandoning ICE vehicles. To truly make a fair system, the payments for road maintenance should be proportional to the damage done to the road by the vehicle. Thus, fees should scale exponentially with vehicle weight.
This of course would make road freight very expensive, and that's a good thing, because freight should be shipped on roads as little as possible. Freight should be shipped by rail until the last possible mile.
That still doesn't pay for roads. I love EVs and think their use should be more broadly encouraged, but the gas tax made for a very simple use tax and it's not obvious how one would replace it to do the same thing for EVs.
Simply saying EVs are so much better for the environment that they don't need to pay for roads at all seems a little short sighted.
Those taxes don't just pay for repairing damaged roads. It also pays to build and maintain streets and pedestrian ways where it wouldn't ordinarily be economic to do so -- like paving the street to your house or paving your alleyway and keeping it in good repair.
That being said, the 'make up' taxes being proposed for EVs in general far outstrip the taxes that would be collected on the fuel had the cars consumed it, even if they had consumed it at the rates of far less fuel efficient cars. I think we can probably agree on that point.
EVs are heavier than normal cars and you are using the road. So, it is fair to pay the road tax. Assuming the money collected for this directly goes to road maintenance.
I do not have problem with paying taxes that go for roads. Even though in my case I own PHEVs than BEVs. That would be last of my complains.
I'm ignoring the weight increase, just saying that people that only own EVs will not pay the gas tax, and will therefore contribute far less to the cost of road maintenance.
There's a similar shifting dynamic in solar power, where much of the cost of utilities is actually for distribution and maintenance, and as long as you're connected to the grid you're contributing to that cost, but to encourage people to use less power more of the cost is priced into the $/kWh price, which all breaks down when you're generating most of your own power but still using the grid.
It's an interesting economic problem, and I don't think there are any super obviously "fair" solutions right away.
The users of a resource should, of course, pay for that resource. And there's a compelling logic that the people who cause maintenance to be required should be the ones charged for it.
The issue is, Leaf drivers are very much not the people who damage roads: Leafs are somewhat light cars (a bit more than a Civic, substantially less than SUVs). Cumulative road damage is linear with the number of miles driven and quartic with vehicular weight. Gas taxes roughly capture the linearity from miles driven but only a fraction of the factor from vehicle weight.
If the Republican leader quoted in the article is actually interested in bridging the gap between gasoline tax revenues and expenditures on roads and ending the subsidy the public provides for expensive private decisions, he should look toward charging more of road users in general than a small minority of a couple thousand (it probably costs as much to implement and collect this tax as the revenue it brings). Instead of, you know, sticking taxes to the people whose consumption choices he finds so damn hippy and unpalatable.
(And, yes, I oppose government subsidies for electric vehicles too, whose environmental benefits should be captured by more efficient carbon taxes or permits.)
They're paying more than they would have paid for a cheaper/lighter car. The fuel thing is made complicated by EVs with heavy batteries. But the fact that they've paid _something_ greater than they otherwise might have doesn't mean that they've paid their fair share. Road maintenance in most places is _not_ fully covered by gas taxes; other tax payers also contribute. If a subset of vehicles are driving a large cost in updated guard rails, it's not enough for them to pay somewhat more than other drivers -- they should pay enough that the rest of society isn't subsidizing them.
road taxes should be done for mileage as that more accurately measures their use and impact of roads. you would of course still keep the other fees associated with vehicles like tag fees and such.
with regards to the article, charging should not be free in public spaces. that alone would cut down on some of the abuse. Electric cars need a very clear and obvious indicator for charge state as well - that is communicated back to the charger and visual to any who walk up. Likely a standard is going to be needed
I think people are starting from the wrong end of the problem. It appears we have two types of roads, access roads (think last mile roads in residential or rural areas) whose replacement cycle is driven by useful life vs usage. Then we have high throughput roads, that have enough volume to require usage driven replacement cycles. So if those access roads are y% of the miles and x% of the cost, then a vehicle “access” tax should be levied to cover that part of the system, and toll/usage based tax should be levied to maintain the usage based part of the system.
Side note: to adjust for the pollution CO2 element you could add a tax to the wholesale price per MW of electricity based on generation type, in addition to a lower, purely pollution priced gas tax
Now, about those "paying their fair share of 25% of the cost of the roads" gas taxes: In Utah, the gas tax was $0.245 in 1997. Today it's $0.34, when adjusting for inflation alone it should be $0.46, so drivers have received what amounts to a 25% tax reduction in the last ~30 years. The federal gas tax hasn't been raised in thirty years. So there's another tax break drivers have gotten.
That's just inflation. Average fuel economy has risen from 18mpg to over 22, which means per mile drivers are paying on average 20% less of "their fair share" due to mileage increases alone.
So it's a bit weird that suddenly people in gas cars are getting high and mighty about EV owners "not paying their fair share."
> EVs also wear roads more than gas cars do, on average, because of their higher rate. And it's not linear wear per pound, either.
The Ford F150, which is the most popular "car" sold in America, is between 4,069 and 5,697 pounds.
A Tesla Model 3 is 3,862 to 4,048 lbs. A Chevy Bolt is ~3600lb.
Yet..who gets taxed more by Utah? Does Utah give people with small 3000lb gas cars a tax break, and penalize 5,000lb pickup truck owners?
Also, where were all these concerns about increased road wear on budgets when American purchasing trends tilted toward larger and heavier SUVs and pickups? Average vehicle weight has risen 10%+ since 1990.
EVs start to get popular and suddenly now everyone's very concerned about...road wear?
Bish, please.
Utah didn't want to raise the gas tax (it's a political third rail) so they relied on their extremely stupid electorate to buy up the myth that drivers in gas cars are "paying their fair share" and instituted a punitive tax on EVs which Dumb Yokel Bob fully supports because it's sticking it to those "libruhls in them fuckin' priuses an shit", believing everything he hears on conservative radio about EVs (for example, that they 'cost' more CO2 to make than a regular car. Which is true....until around 14,000 miles into ownership when the EV breaks even compared to a gas car.)
I support mileage taxes on Electric vehicles. The whole idea of the gas tax (at least in the US) was a way approximately tax road usage to fund infrastructure. Why should predominantly well off ev owners get out of paying for road maintenance? If we want to discourage carbon emissions just tax carbon.
This is like saying “the movie theater makes money by charging to park a car in the parking lot, but you walked to the theater, so how is it fair that you get to watch the movie for free?” Well, perhaps the movie theater should come up with some slightly less ridiculous way of charging for entrance.
Or if governments had decided to fund road maintenance using a tax on car paint, would it be unfair to buy a car that isn’t painted?
And what about people who use gasoline and diesel for things other than automobiles on public roads? That’s also unfair.
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