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Comment by ProfessorLayton | Hacker News Reader

Semis are incredibly damaging to roads, they cause 1,400x more wear than cars! [1]

It seems that with current battery technology, electric semis' average weight is going to increase drastically, even if they remain within the allowable GVW limit. For example, a Model S weighs more than a Honda Pilot, due to the 1,200lb battery [2]! . Without the diesel tax, we're going to have to figure out another way to pay for road usage.

Right now semis are heavily subsidized by everyone else (They're certainly not paying 1,400x more in fuel tax). And I suppose it would be unfair to continue to subsidize diesel, and not electric. However, as our infrastructure decays we're going to have to figure this out.

[1] https://www.lrrb.org/pdf/201432.pdf [2] http://www.roperld.com/science/teslamodels.htm

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The Tesla Model S weighs significantly less than most pickups and large SUVs on the road today. Tesla's heaviest, the Model X, is significantly lighter than the GMC Yukon, for example.

I don't see the logic in this argument. Electric vehicles are not going to destroy the roads.

Road maintenance is funded primarily through taxation of gas and diesel [1]. As electric vehicles don't use either, they do not pay a proportional share of the cost to maintain roads. The fuel tax has been an elegant funding solution because it scales both with mileage and vehicle weight (as heavier vehicles use more fuel).

Further, electric vehicles weigh more than comparable gas or diesel vehicles, making the ratio of road wear to tax contribution even more disparate.

Even if you agree electric vehicles are good for society overall, we will need to find a new way to fund road maintenance.

[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X16...

The same way we fund it currently- by allocating money from the budget. While it may feel good to talk about "this tax pays for this program" it is not a law of nature that a decrease in a specific tax will lead to a corresponding decrease in funding for any particular program. On the contrary, it is commonly expected that an overrun in a particular tax will be spent elsewhere.

When the day comes that the revenue from the fuel tax has dipped low enough that the money needs to be replaced, I am quite sure we can come up with 300 other ways to allocate the tax burden appropriately.

Some things are more easily measured than others, e.g. how much fuel has been used vs how much street lighting has been used. Some public spending is more aligned with usage than others, e.g. road wear aligns well with distance traveled vs water piping wear does not align with use. It is a very nice situation when spending depends on usage which is easily measured - tax burden can be concentrated on actual users and not distributed to wide population.

This is the point of the debate. Prior to electric vehicles, we have been more or less in a situation where we could concentrate tax burden of road maintenance on vehicle users/owners. Electric vehicle use is much harder to measure apart from coarse odometer readings taken during inspection.

Ditch the fuel tax, and instead have an annual registration tax based on distance travelled and vehicle weight? Could also incorporate lesser factors like efficiency, and likely to be a subsidy for heavy vehicles. Of course the beauty of fuel tax that it incorporates all of those factors already, and you get easy, regular collection.

As to the sister comment on how do we pay for the extra electricity infrastructure... through your electricity bill?

> have an annual registration tax based on distance travelled

Now the hard part is getting accurate distance traveled figures from all road users. Good luck with that.

> As to the sister comment on how do we pay for the extra electricity infrastructure... through your electricity bill?

Yes, and the system is breaking down because of solar. Typically, most of what you pay for electricity goes towards maintaining the line to your house, not towards generation. When you get solar panels that cover most of your usage, but keep the connection for use when the sun does not shine, your bill goes down to the point where it's no longer enough to maintain your grid connection.

The correct solution to that is to disaggregate transmission and generation, and for transmission bill you for the size of your main incoming fuse instead of consumption. However, in much of the US the utilities are heavily constrained in how they bill you by law, and cannot do this, so the only thing they can do is hike up prices on everyone, so solar is even more appealing and more people get it, resulting in even higher prices...

In the UK (and many other countries) each vehicle has a mandatory yearly inspection.

The MOT test in the UK checks emissions, roadworthiness, basic functionality. No reason why it couldn't also report mileage.

Most modern cars provide an API so you can track mileage. Again, not hard to provide that as a taxable figure.

"The MOT test in the UK checks emissions"

Unfortunately the UK does not have proper emissions checks as part of the MOT.

There is a (subjective) visual check for visible smoke, and a metered exhaust check which again only tests generically for "smoke", ie large particulates.

Unfortunately there is no testing of specific pollutants (NOx, PM2.5, PM10, etc) so many vehicles can pass MOT even if they are way outside allowed emissions levels, have had DPF removed, etc.

We get accurate numbers for income tax, why not for road tax?

Because installing a tracker on someone’s car will end with lots of privacy issues? You need a tracker to properly attribute taxes to the person that owns the road, and even though you don’t need super accurate trackers, any tracking can be abused.

You don't need trackers if you just want to replicate the mechanism of the fuel tax for cars that don't use fuel. For that you only need a tamper-protected mileage counter.

You don't need an electronic tracker to implement distance-based road charges. New Zealand has been doing this for decades:

https://www.nzta.govt.nz/vehicles/licensing-rego/road-user-c...

You mean, the mileage counter on my car is a privacy issue?

Just read of the mileage counter, end of story.

I disagree on ditching the current fuel tax for combustion engines. What about keeping the current system for combustion engines and creating the "distance traveled tax" only for electric vehicles. Although the separate systems would be a bit confusing for hybrids.

Only took me a few seconds to figure out how to abuse the distance traveled tax for combustion engines. Physically roll back the odometer if the vehicle is old enough, do it electronically, disconnect the odometer, and/or other ways. I think people that travel around the country a lot would abuse. FYI, messing with the odometer is a felony so don't do it.

My state does not have yearly inspections, so nobody is going to read my odometer.

> Even if you agree electric vehicles are good for society overall, we will need to find a new way to fund road maintenance.

The simple answer is a mileage tax on registration of vehicles, thoufh California’s EV fee coming in 2020 is simpler if not as well scaled to impact.

Only took me a few seconds to figure out how to abuse the mileage tax for combustion engines. Physically roll back the odometer if the vehicle is old enough, do it electronically, disconnect the odometer, and/or other ways. I think people that travel around the country a lot would abuse. FYI, messing with the odometer is a felony so don't do it.

My state does not have yearly inspections, so nobody is going to read my odometer.

Anyway someone will need to pay for the electric infrastructure, all these megawatt-scale charging stations, power lines to supply them and 2-3 times more power plants than we need now. But hopefully reality check will come before that

Petrol/Diesel destroys the environment. Maintaining the road is the govt's duty. Let them figure it out :)

There are some +ve and some -ve points about each technology and I'd rather have the govt build roads every year or research on building better roads if that is what it takes to get every vehicle to be electric.

With "smart" meters, they will be able to tax more for electricity used to charge cars...

California will start charging a $100 fee to EVs at registration each year for this.

A fully specced Model X weighs 5,531 lbs vs a fully specced Yukon at 5743 lbs, hardly significant, but thats beside the point.

I was specifically referencing semis, where an incredible amount of road damage comes from, and the need for new road funding to account for the transition from diesel taxes.

The logic is that road damage does not scale linearly with vehicle weight, and with current battery tech, an electric semi will need to complete more trips for the same amount of cargo due to the battery's weight eating into the load capacity.

How does road damage not scale with vehicle weight? Or is it simply non-linear?

I can't imagine it not being related at least to GVWR / num_tires.

Apparently it scales with the fourth power of axle weight (http://www.nvfnorden.org/lisalib/getfile.aspx?itemid=601), roughly.

> The Tesla Model S weighs significantly less than most pickups and large SUVs

Pardon my ignorance but I thought the S was a luxury sedan and not a pickup or large SUV? Does the weight of the S compare favorably with vehicles in its own class?

Ford F150 Truck: 4,051 to 5,238 lbs

Model S Curb Weight: 4,647.3 lbs

Cadillac CTS: 3,652 to 4,016 lbs

---------

The Model S is anywhere from 1000lbs to 500lbs more than other vehicles in its class.

Even if a Tesla Semi weighs the same than an unloaded diesel semi, the point would still stand.

Diesel taxes are one way to help make the truck industry cover the costs of road improvements, which electric semis will never have to pay. This requires a new funding source given how much semis destroy the roads.

In a similar fashion, Diesel is not charged for the social cost that its carbon and NOX emissions cause on the health of the communities through which they drive. They should be, but regulations will take time to catch up to technology effects in both cases.

F150 Curb Weight: 4,051 to 5,238 lbs

Model S Curb Weight: 4,647.3 lbs

While it's a far cry from 1,400x more in fuel tax, semis do get "punished" for their poor fuel mileage (paying more tax per mile driven) compared to a person in a Prius. In Iowa, the tax is 30.8 cents/gallon for gasoline and 32.5 cents/gallon for diesel. [1] At 53 mpg and 6 mpg, the tax cost per miles is 0.616 cents and 5.42 cents respectively. And of course electric vehicles avoid this tax entirely.

Applying the tax on a per-gallon basis is great for environmentalism, as it encourages higher fuel efficiency. Applying it by vehicle classification and cost/mile could eliminate the subsidization, but would be a huge pain to keep track of.

[1] https://tax.iowa.gov/iowa-fuel-tax-rate-changes-effective-ju...

> And of course electric vehicles avoid this tax entirely.

That's hardly true, most states have enacted an EV tax on registration that covers the same wear and tear from the gas tax.

When I last ran the numbers I paid more for the EV tax(which I'm happy to do in order to pay my fair share) then I did in gas.

100% of that goes to the state you purchase/register in, correct? There is currently no federal EV tax that would offset federal fuel taxes that help fund interstate highways, correct?

The assertion was the EV skip the tax completely. That said the majority of the gas tax goes to the state level(at least here in WA state).

There's also a simple solution to the federal tax, add it to registration just the same way the state tax works.

There is an even easier solution, toll all federal highways and replace the fuel tax with that.

however for many people they start with a 7500 dollar offset just from the Federal government. throw in state rebates and the revenue lost to EVs gets really exaggerated.

my state, Georgia, is damn obnoxious with a two hundred dollar fee per year to declare as an EV; my car which is a Volt can declare either way; which when I ran the numbers put me beyond my normal driving on gasoline alone. Meaning I decided to not list as an EV because it punishing, not rewarding.

You should be required to list as an EV, so that you pay the share of road maintenance of which you're currently cheating the taxpayers of Georgia.

Semis don't pay more fuel tax per gallon but they pay significantly higher registration, and higher tolls on toll roads, and probably other taxes and fees depending on state. They also face substantial fines if they are caught overweight. Whether this approaches the cost of the road damage they cause I don't know, but they do also perform the useful function of moving goods from place to place.

Registration, licenses, and tolls combined make up for less than 3% of the marginal cost per mile of the trucking industry. Registration, licenses, and tolls combined cost roughly the same amount as tire wear.

[0] Table 7: average marginal cost per mile, 2008-2013 at http://www.atri-online.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/ATRI-O...

Rhode Island recently added tolls to the main interstate targeting trucks passing through. If you need to pay for usage, charging for usage certainly seems reasonable.

I believe that also is the case on the tappan zee bridge. IIRC when going south bound cars don't have a toll but commercial trucks do.

In India, almost all major highways have tolls and the toll amount keeps on rising.

Is the Model S/Pilot comparison useful here? Wouldn't most of the weight of a semi would be in the trailer? It doesn't seem intuitive to me that increasing the weight of the cab, even by several multiples, would meaningfully increases the weight of the semi.

It won't, because the gross combination weight is limited by law.

Any weight you add to the cab comes out of the payload for a vehicle application that hauls at the legal limit.

Per the report, road wear does not increase linearly with weight, so more semis at or near the weight limit will end up damaging the roads more overall.

Page 9 shows that even pickups cause 7x more wear than a passenger car.

Additionally, any extra weight comes from the haul capacity of the truck, this means that more trips will be needed to move the same amount of cargo, and again causing a disproportional amount of wear on the road.

Are the semis being subsidized, or the consumption habits of end consumers? Wear on the road network is just one of the externalities of trucking that is incompletely priced, but shipping companies aren't driving trucks around for their own amusement.

The way a company like a retailer delivers goods is an implementation detail under their control, not dictated purely by consumer habits. If the cost structure of shipping by truck changed, retailers would do a better job of traffic optimization or would even work out new operational processes that used fewer trucks. I know first-have that the current system has some real slack even at large retail chains.

Example: a lot of companies are not doing a great job of planning multi-hop truck routes and instead send a less full truck to every location. Similarly, the trucks are only full in one direction because that's easier to manage than planning routes that, for example, drop off at a store then visit a vendor before returning to a distribution center.

If trucking costs increased in proportion to road wear, you can bet improving these operational processes will be a higher priority!

...less full truck...

Every time we've gotten a truck-shipped freight delivery in the last decade, the trailer has been mostly empty. Our business is not at the end of the road, either.

How do you compare the roadwear problem to the one of massive pollution caused by burning millions of gallons of petroleum every year to move these vehicles around?

I'm not sure a Model S is in the same category of vehicle as a Honda Pilot. What point are you trying to make?

Agreed that funding the roadways should be a topic of discussion (also because it's private contractors - often with connections to those authorizing public funds).

> How do you compare the roadwear problem to the one of massive pollution caused by burning millions of gallons of petroleum every year to move these vehicles around?

Maybe there should be a joule tax applied to all forms of energy, a portion of which is dedicated to environmental efforts and a portion to infrastructure maintenance? There could be a lower tax rate for green energy (perhaps no environmental element, only road and electric infrastructure costs).

There was lots of debate about net metering in Nevada a year or two ago. One element from that discussion was if everyone was on solar, there wouldn't be money for maintaining the grid. My proposal is to avoid that issue by acknowledging there are costs to remaining connected to the grid even if you net meter to 0.

That would address the environmental side. I think a cost/mile applied to vehicles of different classifications would be the best way to address road wear.

We have to be careful about a road tax that distinguishes type of vehicle instead of its weight.

One could easily see this becoming politicized to harm whichever industry the state's friends wanted. Eg if Old Fossil wanted a jab at New Electric to "level the field against unfair competition", slapping a big joule tax would do it.

That’s the point. Honda Pilot is an 8 passenger SUV. A much less capable car, the model S weighs as much as the Pilot. So if Tesla were to make an 8 passenger hauler, that car would weigh, what, double the size of the Pilot?

Increasing vehicle volume does not do as much to increase weight as you might think. A Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport is a 4,400 lb lbs 2 seater. In comparison to the original 4,323 lb 5 seater Tesla.

A more apt comparison, I agree - both luxury sports cars.

Do people buy Model S vehicles to haul stuff. More to the point, how many Pilots are on the road fully loaded?

My guess? Most people buy both cars to haul 1 person a very few miles almost every day.

Again, presenting data to make a point that lacks context only detracts from your argument.

Wtf are you talking about? I am presenting no data. I am presenting facts: they are different class vehicles, and yet weigh the same. There is no analysis of data necessary to reach that conclusion.

Put another way: the Model S is heavier than most vehicles in its own class. What is so difficult to understand about that?

What you are presenting is opinion (that most Pilot owners only drive a few miles alone) unburdened by any backing facts or data. It may be true, I don’t know. But you provide nothing to back up your claim, yet present it as fact.

the model x is 7 seats, and weighs 5400lbs vs 4200lbs for the honda pilot.

I happen to have owned a Pilot in my life. One of the nice things about it was that I could not only haul people, but also cargo. Full sized dry wall and plywood to be exact.

Whilst true this is also misleading in that road wear is not completely from trafficking, and so the 1400x just looks at the marginal difference. The proportion of wear accountable to your relatively fixed externalities (weather, water, utilities) depends on the type of road and the location. But say if 60% of the wear is due to weather and water, the 1400x factor comes across very misleading.

To put more simply - if you banned semis roads would not last 1400x longer, nowhere near in fact.

In Australia there is a tax on biodiesel (cooking oil) [1] for this reason, even if you source it yourself. I imagine a similar thing will be necessary for electric

[1] https://www.ato.gov.au/Business/Excise-and-excise-equivalent...

Or we could just skip the proxies and bill people directly based on the estimated road damage done based on number of miles driven and the type of car driven. We could use the ubiquitous highway cameras to track that. Call it a "road use tax". I guess people might not appreciate the government tracking their movements, though.

> Right now semis are heavily subsidized by everyone else

Ok but its not like these guys are just joyriding around, they are providing a service to make sure that people get the things they need and food to eat

In winter climate regions an average everyday car with studded tires is very damaging to roads. In my town you will get a fine if you leave studded winter tires on into the spring.

Uh, Thor and Tesla dont get to ignore GVW standards just because their tractor is heavier.

You are correct about these electric trucks not paying gas tax though. Thats a problem.

A problem easily solved by requiring tolls on Interstates. Most states already operate scales. I don't see why this is hard. Next.

Drivers already have to keep log books. Make them submit them and pay per mile to the states they drove in.

Hmm. Could one simply put on many more wheels? It has to be some nonlinear function of pressure per wheel?

Purely speculation, but it seems at least that this would greatly increase friction.

Charge a fixed amount per weight-distance?

We can afford more road maintenance.

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