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Comment by bpodgursky | Hacker News Reader

Reflexive downvotes are kind of out of control on HN now (parent was gray)...

For those who don't understand, gasoline taxes provide a large portion of highway maintenance revenue (often most). Electric cars have as much wear-and-tear on roads as gas cars, but avoid that tax right now. At some point we will need to figure out how to shift taxes from per-gallon to per-mile, or add an equivalent surcharge on electric chargers.

Since home chargers are just electrical outlets, there's no real way to tax just the "highway electricity" there. So we either have to increase income/property taxes across the board, or have a mileage tax. Most of HN would't like option (1) because then everyone who bikes/takes public transit is subsidizing all highway transit.

So yeah, it has to happen eventually.

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> For those who don't understand, gasoline taxes provide a large portion of highway maintenance revenue

This isn't true. They only provide 20% of revenue in CA and between 20-30% across the country. Taxes on fuel have not been raised for decades. Currently, most road funding comes from non-road related taxes.

I made a longer post above with citations.

> Electric cars have as much wear-and-tear on roads as gas cars

Sometimes even more. Of course that depends on exact car that is being compared, but as a rule of thumb, an all-electric vehicle would be significantly heavier due to battery weight, and as was pointed out:

> Road damage rises [...] to the fourth power of the axle weight [0].

Salient example is a Tesla model S, which have a curb weight of 2.1 metric tons in standard configuration [1], while comparable gasoline-powered sedan weights in at approximately 1.5 metric tons [2]. That means that applying formula above, "average", electric car causes 3.6 times more road wear than "average" CO2-belching one, just due to being 40% heavier while having same number of axles.

To make matters worse, many countries tax vehicles based on their weight (so to translate a fair share of road repair costs to the vehicle owner). And that makes subsidies (in the form of tax exemptions) to the electric vehicles even more important - otherwise electric cars would not be able to compete at all.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_axle_weight_rating

[1] http://www.teslamotors.com/support/model-s-specifications

[2] http://www.bmw.com/com/en/newvehicles/3series/sedan/2015/sho...

> Salient example is a Tesla model S, which have a curb weight of 2.1 metric tons in standard configuration [1], while comparable gasoline-powered sedan weights in at approximately 1.5 metric tons [2]. That means that applying formula above, "average", electric car causes 3.6 times more road wear than "average" CO2-belching one, just due to being 40% heavier while having same number of axles.

The comparison doesn't hold, the Model S is a full-sized sedan, the 3-series is a compact. The Model S is somewhere between the 5-Series and the 7-Series, closer to the 7-Series than the 5.

Either way, both EV and ICE car road wear is completely dwarfed by trucks.

It is a moot point. Having seen (but not driven) model S, I can't say it looks big enough to warrant comparison to a 7-series, and even then latter is 1800kg [0], so Model S is still 17% heavier or causing 1.85 times road wear.

Point about trucks stands of course, as you've pointed in the other comment. 3-4 orders of magnitude more road wear - that's crazy! I wonder how does that translates to truck road taxes.

[0] http://www.bmw.com/com/en/newvehicles/7series/sedan/2015/sho...

But is the Californian tax based on how much "wear" cars do to the highways or also on the pollution they create?

Currently, neither. It's based strictly upon how much gasoline they consume, as are all highway taxes nationwide (since they are levied per gallon of diesel or gasoline).

road wear and tear goes with the cube of vehicle weight.

Large trucks cause 99% of road wear. Teslas will never be a siginificant factor.

* not cube (n^3), but fourth degree (n^4)

* not of vehicle weight, but per-axis weight

Trucks are still big "winners" though - see masklinn's calculations here.

> For those who don't understand, gasoline taxes provide a large portion of highway maintenance revenue (often most).

The gas tax indeed provides the largest single source of funding, but many roads are funded mostly by general revenue nowadays. I seem to recall that half of major highways and interstates fail to capture enough gas tax revenue to maintain themselves, with roads in general only getting about half of their funding in the form of the gas tax.

Limited access highways should all be toll roads. It's quite feasible now, and clearly fairer and more efficient than gasoline taxes or funding from general tax revenue.

Or, you know, we could just use tax revenue from elsewhere. There's absolutely no inherent reason that roads have to be paid for by a tax on their usage.

> There's absolutely no inherent reason that roads have to be paid for by a tax on their usage.

Well there's the inherent reason that it's a requirement for proper resources allocation in a capitalistic framework (although the requirement is less tax on their usage and more tax on their consumption/wear)

Over here (Finland), tax revenue from fuel and vehicle taxes is 7 G€ per years, government expenditure on roads is in the order of 1 G€ per year. There is no relationship of vehicle/gas taxes and road maintenance; taxes are just general revenue.

And I think it's just the same in most countries: taxes are just taxes, general revenue; not earmarked money for some particular purpose.

(What baffles me is that the gas tax in U.S. is so low; that contributes to the situation where vehicles are often very large and consume ridiculously high amounts of fuel).

I had a big long post written about the why and how of the gas tax in the USA, and the economics of consumer preference, the history of American car design, and the implications of the historic price of fuel on car design, penetration of auto use, and the effect of all that on urban planning.

It was too long, and I fear it might be boring. So, to summarize: due to historic accident, Americans like big cars. Moreover, no matter what cars they might prefer, ownership of a car is an economic necessity for most Americans-again, historic accident. Those Americans are also not very well off, at least by northern-Europe standards, so money for gas is a big line-item in the family budget. A regressive tax increase on fuel would be clearly felt && very unwelcome, even though many if not most could see the logic behind it.

Agreed, but what I don't understand is why poor people (who have trouble with fuel price) still buy so big cars.

That's only true if our goal is to minimize consumption, which I'm not sure is advisable for the majority of roads, especially once we switch to electrical vehicles. A subsidized transportation network is pretty effective at encouraging commerce.

That being said, I do think there are localized areas where we want to decrease usage. So the future probably involves a combination of tax-free electrical vehicles and substantially more toll roads/congestion-charged zones.

Probably the best plan to fund road infrastructure would be to make all (most?) roads into toll roads, with tolls whose price floats as a function of instantaneous supply and demand, and is low for trucks/commercial traffic/motorcycles and high for private automobiles. I realize this is a tall order.

This would be a significantly regressive tax, like sales tax. Why is this the best plan exactly? Why have lower taxes on commercial traffic and trucks, which cause a relatively larger amount of road maintenance?

Couldn't you just raise the yearly tax on having a(n electric) car in that case?

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

> road taxes should be done for mileage as that more accurately measures their use and impact of roads.

Not at all. Axle load has a completely outsized impact on road wear. Civil engineers use a fourth power law to estimate road wear with respect to axle load: if you double the mileage you double road wear, but if you double the axle load (assuming constant axle count) the road wear is multiplied by 16.

Put in numbers, a Model S has an axle load of 1T (2T on 2 axles). A fully loaded 18-wheeler is limited to 36T (80000lbs) on 5 axles or a 7.2T average axle load. The road wear impact of the 18-wheeler compared to the Model S is 2.5 * 7.2^4 (2.5 times the number of axles and axle load ratio raised to the 4th power), or about 6700 times that of the Model S.

It's actually slightly higher than that as 18-wheelers have 4 7.7T axles and 1 5.5 axle rather than 5 7.2T axles, the estimate is closer to 7500. Your standard 2T sedan has to drive for 7500 miles to generate the road wear a loaded 18-wheeler generates every mile.

Assuming your 2T sedan lives for 150000 miles, it's had the same road wear impact as 20 miles of a loaded 18-wheeler.

When it comes to road wear and maintenance, mileage-based pricing and taxes are trucking subsidies.

Trucking subsidies? I find that a bit of a strange attitude.

Without the roads there would be no deliveries. No deliveries, no industry. No industry, no jobs. So of all the things to call it, a trucking subsidy seems a very loaded description.

Just because we need trucks doesn't mean that we should subsidize them. If trucks paid their fair share of road repair costs, then those costs would be allocated into the costs of goods and services accordingly, while gas and fuel taxes on personal vehicles could decrease. One might argue that this is a more "fair" distribution of costs.

Do we really need all those trucks? Trains can ship goods, and rail is much cheaper to maintain than roads.

There is no train station at my house.

Trucks don't come to your house either.

But more to the point, actual trucking costs would increase the appeal of trains for long haul, while keeping trucks (possibly smaller) for shorter hops between train depots and distribution centers (aka stores).

It's accurate to call it a subsidy. That doesn't mean it's bad.

I personally think it's definitely a valuable subsidy.

> Trucking subsidies? I find that a bit of a strange attitude.

What else would you call the artificial lowering of trucking and truck-hauled goods prices through passing a significant subset of trucking costs directly onto taxpayers instead of reflecting said costs in hauling prices?

> Without the roads there would be no deliveries. No deliveries, no industry. No industry, no jobs.

I'm not sure what comment you're replying to here, but it certainly isn't mine.

In North Carolina they already do that. I pay an extra $100 a year because I own an electric car.

Electric cars probably contribute more to road wear and tear because they are generally heavier. I actually support flat rate vehicle weight/mileage use taxes. That woudo encourage lighter cars and less driving. The technology exists and it could be done. You could also add time of use charging (or discounts for off peak driving).

(Vehicle caused*) Road damage cause by anything other than heavy trucks is trival, less than 1%.

Weather also does a lot of damage.

yep. This is why (even as I am a bicycle commuter) I find it hilarious when people talk about bicycle commuters not causing potholes. Typically, bicycle commuters aren't displacing heavy trucks.

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