I'm sure it contributes, but I think the key reason it's more politically feasible is because it doesn't hit as many (especially poorer) Europeans as hard (EDIT: I meant to imply here there are a lot fewer miles driven).
Looking up the statistics on miles driven, the gap isn't as big as I expected, though, so I'm probably not giving the tax as much credit as it deserves.
Poorer countries in Europe tax fuel more. If you raise fuel tax, people will find ways to buy less fuel. Generally this means more efficient (often smaller) cars, and perhaps prioritizing living more near to jobs etc.
The main problem is that fuel tax should be increased slowly so people can change their consumption accordingly.
Europeans do not have significant amounts of space to build housing supplies, that's why space/m^2 is much higher than here in the states, witness San Fancisco's trolley system that caused suburbanization (or at least enabled it).
Gas Taxes in Europe are double than here in the states[1], US gas is taxed at relatively low rates when compared to other nations. Used as a user tax here in the states, its predominant purpose is to fund roadway improvements and maintenance; however, it is used to fund transit and other items. In Europe, the higher gas tax is used to drive (good one Agustus) less travel and subsidize rail lines.
The trams / streetcars in Europe work because the suburbanization was stopped by high government taxes and forces the populous to pay more for a lower comparable standard of living.
*Edited for why, if you disagree, please provide an alternative opinion. I have taken the time to provide a discourse, if a downvote to it is necessary, then please provide a reason.
They should make a separate road tax instead of mixing up all sorts of taxes in fuel. Actually there is one for national roads or highways but they'd have to tax by distance, so taxing fuel is an easy one. In Europe we pay more taxes than what the fuel actually costs so obviously people are quite incentivized getting an EV. Which is good news because: no fumes.
Then they should stop driving so much. That’s the whole point. A tax that discourages any large amount of people to drive gas guzzlers is working correctly.
Europe is filled with lower and middle income people as well. They don’t take jobs with a 1 hour drive using a truck that gets 13 MPG.
Also gas taxes in the US are far lower than in much of Europe. Gas tax is 5.9x higher in Germany than in my state of NC, for example. Gas tax is what funds a lot of infrastructure development.
At least here in Germany you also get tax breaks for long commutes. Something like 30 cents per kilometer per day iirc. We also subsidize parking spots in cities. Often they are free and if they aren't they are much cheaper than the space they consume.
Sweden is a large and sparsely populated country. In the north, many have 1h, 60 mile commutes. In Stockholm a commute might be 1h and 10 miles. There is pretty stiff opposition to raised gasoline taxes because it is seen as an unfair on rural people. It's also regressive since income is much lower in rural areas.
If "city pollution" and "congestion" are the externalities then congestion taxes actually make more sense - and are extremely popular compared to gasoline tax.
City gasoline taxes would make sense, but they don't allow hour by hour control of congestion. I don't work in the city but I can drive in "for free" e.g late in the evening.
Without the bad diesel tax, a lot of people choose to commute to work by car because they would end up spending roughly the same as with public transport. The marginal cost of using a car for a 10km five days a week, let's say 60EUR/month, would now compete with 0EUR. For people making 1k/month this is money.
To be fair, people in regional areas that travel long distances already pay far more fuel related taxes than those in cities on account of using more fuel per capita.
Gasoline cars already pay tax per mile, as gas is very heavily taxed. Electric cars do too, as electricity is also taxed pretty heavily. (Notice a trend yet?)
The only advantage is that there can be a more fine grained taxation of cars, based on time and location. But I don't trust my government with that kind of data.
Edit: A handy visual aid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax#/media/File:Fuel_tax_...
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