States Hit Electric Vehicle Owners with High Fees | Hacker News Reader

States Hit Electric Vehicle Owners with High Fees

consumerreports.org

38 pointshoward94158 comments

I don't own an EV but I have no problem giving them a pass.

I'm sure the fuel tax these states collect at the pumps for gas powered off road vehicles and equipment more than covers the extra fees they want to charge EV's.

My lawn mower, weed wacker, kids minibike and gas generator don't use roads but still pay a fuel tax at the pump.

Wouldn't it make more sense to use some other general tax revenue to fund the roads? Whether or not they drive a car, everyone benefits almost equally from the road system, which is used for transporting food and other vital products, for medical transport, for law enforcement, for practically everything to support our modern lifestyles.

Even someone claiming to be living totally off-grid is benefiting from roads just by purchasing materials to build their homes, solar panels, selling their produce at the farmer's market etc.

Like gasoline tax, a per-vehicle tax is regressive; the affluent can afford it, but the poor get taxed almost as much for a necessity that they can't get to work without. A case could be made that a Tesla S might pay a higher excise tax than a Leaf (or any cheaper sedan) but the higher taxes levied on electrics are going to disincentivize the working poor and lower middle class from going to EV's.

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 taxes are already not-that-high of a fraction of what funds the roads anyway: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/05/debunking-the...

That doesn't mean politicians won't pretend like every piece of infrastructure is funded purely though state gas taxes in an effort to create additional revenue streams and justify increasing registration fees and whatnot.

Personally I'm fine with not imposing extra taxes on EVs. They're a negligible portion of road traffic right now and since they aren't heavy trucks they account for basically none of the infrastructure wear and tear.

Most road damage due to vehicles is actually caused by heavy commercial trucks etc. Taxing vehicles by total impact on roads makes more sense to me, as the price will effectively be passed onto consumers who buy products transported by truck. It might help incentivise development of more local rail lines which we need to be doing in the US anyway.

And penalize people who don't actually need big stupid trucks.

I assume you are talking about silly oversized pickups ala brodozers and the like. The gp is talking about commercial vehicles which do actual work and are part of infrastructure.

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.

I can't speak to other states, but in PA, part of the logging is what miles you've driven through the state. This prevents drivers from stopping and filling up on the border at a cheaper state and have enough diesel to drive through without buying more in our state. So the road tax is already based on mileage not just fuel. It is just partially charged at fuel purchase time.

The main problem with EVs is that it would be easy to back charge you based on mileage but getting that $600 bill all at one time would be a hardship for some people. PA has an annual registration fee that also hits seniors quite hard as they drive almost no miles but at least they don't pay much in tax at the pump.

fyi, PA is a great case study as we have more miles of road than any other state and the majority of shipping to/from the northeast goes through the keystone state. I think we'll have to be more innovative and split these into a monthly payment based on expected miles and you pay the balance at annual inspection/registration time. Then we can charge based on weight and mileage to get a more fair picture of use. [Source: my sister is a high level director at PennDOT.]

Weight * Mileage. Done.

Surely this is where carbon taxes come in. Or a yearly fee or road tax on all vehicles, perhaps graduated by axle weight.

A fee purely on EVs, when it's far in excess of what a typical driver will pay in fuel taxes, is nothing more or less than a fossil fuel subsidy. It's going to discourage EV take up, and prolong ICE usage. The excess payments should be coming from the petrol and diesel burning vehicles, to discourage their use.

I currently live in a state that charges extra for EV. I ran the numbers as I have an EV. It turns out. I pay less tax under the EV tax then I would driving using Gas.

I use the roads. I have no problem helping to pay for them.

These fees are remarkably short-sighted. We're in a climate emergency and we need massive adoption of electric vehicles powered by clean electricity as soon as possible. Anything that gets in the way of that goal, especially in the next 10 years, is contributing to our demise.

Basically if you're getting a new car, it needs to be electric, and we'll let the energy companies catch up.

Saul Griffith of Otherlab at Maker Faire: https://youtu.be/CjFwHhB8JeU?t=21686

They’re mostly R leaning states and/or currently R governed or controlled.

Il passed their fee through a legislative with D control of both houses & it was signed by a D governor.

They’re not on the map.

Because that does not fit into the ALEC narrative. Washington state was one of the earlier states to consider additional fee on EVs. I do not know if they did it or not. The idea of certain vehicles not paying taxes that fund roads is or at least used to be bi-partisan.

Only states with taxes higher to EV vehicles than gas taxes are included in the map. Not all states that have EV taxes are included.

Many of the states also produce lots of oil.

I think ultimately, we'll have to tax the electricity used for electric vehicles, as at least over here(UK) roads are almost entirely maintained from fuel taxes and those will keep shrinking with every year. I imagine that the car will have its own meter and you will have to report it every now and then, just like we already do with gas and electricity at home already. Or maybe all chargers will be required to know that this electricity is charged at a different tariff than the rest. We already do it with regular diesel and diesel for non-motoring use after all.

Just use the odometer. You know the mileage, you know the weight of the car, done.

In modern cars I can't imagine it would be very easy to cheat.

You want to tax the amount of electricity used though. 1 mile travelled accelerator to the floor vs 1 mile travelled gently at 5mph will use very different amounts of energy. And I mean it would be trivial for the car to keep track of the number of kWh used.

The amount of energy isn't relevant though? The road wear is.

Unless you're talking about like, indirectly taxing the emissions (since the UK is pretty bad, 300gCO2e/kWh). I would have thought it makes sense to just apply that, at the grid level, on all electricity consumption.

I mean, I'm just thinking that's how it works with petrol/diesel already - we're taxing it on per litre basis, so if you drive a very efficient vehicle(or just drive gently) then you will pay less of that tax than someone who drives a very inefficient car, even if the distances covered are exactly the same. Obviously just because that's how we do it now doesn't mean we have to keep doing that forever.

Sure, the purpose of those taxes are completely different though.

Emissions taxation obviously makes sense to apply per unit of fuel - if you buy 1L of petrol you're almost certainly going to burn it, and the CO2 produced is going to be pretty much identical regardless of which vehicle it's used in or whether it's used in a generator or whatever.

Road wear is more indirect and really just sort of works out on balance (e.g. some pay more than they should, some less).

With an EV only the road wear is relevant. If you're inspecting the car, it makes no sense to use kWh (a proxy for road use) when you can just use mileage (the actual road usage).

No, because driving like an asshole wears roads more than driving like a grandma.

In both ICE and EV this is not by captured by millage, but is captured by energy consumed.

Road wear depends also on the torque applied on the road. I mean, torque becomes a shear pressure on the asphalt surface after all.

And since asphalt is pretty much a liquid with theological properties (unlike glass, which doesn’t flow)... ya road wear depends on driver driving style!

Which is the genius of gas tax, btw. Simple to implement and captures a lot of the externalities of driving. The Europeans get this and tax gas significantly more than ya.

Why should the use of electricity be taxed differently? Whether I'm using it to charge a car or power a computer isn't of any business of the state or the utility company.

Sounds similarly to ISPs and their attempts to zero-rate sites they have deals with. You're just a dumb pipe, what I do with the output is none of your beeswax.

For the same reason why diesel that goes into your personal vehicle has road tax applied to it, but diesel for private use, for heating and for agricultural purposes doesn't. It's the exact same stuff though. You could make the same argument here - let me buy diesel at the pump, but what I do with it is none of your business, maybe I'll use it for heating, maybe I'll use it for my car, it's none of the state's business.

And look, I get what you mean. But we need to be realistic - our road infrastructure is maintaned from fuel taxes. Those taxes have to be applied to the fuel used by electric cars or we'll find out that somehow we need to come up with the budget for it from elsewhere.

roads are almost entirely maintained from fuel taxes

We don't have hypothecated taxes in the UK.

Fuel duty is quite a small part of the overall tax take (3.5%) in the UK. It can be made up elsewhere, it certainly isn't enough of an issue to warrant slowing the adoption of EVs.

3.5% may be small, but they amount to expected £28 billion just this year[0] - even at the national budget level, that is a lot of money.

[0] https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/...

It's not insurmountable though, if it had been 30 or 40 percent it would be a real problem. Especially when you consider the transition to EVs is going to take decades.

This thread seems to love Big Oil in ways that make me skeptical of the msg

Generally speaking the average person who buys an EV is better off than the average person who buys a gasoline/diesel car, new or used, the reason being that EVs are on average more expensive compared to the same class of vehicles which are powered by gasoline/diesel (to say nothing of the fact that I don't know of used EVs that can be purchased under 4,000-5,000 euros, of which the roads around me are full of).

As such it makes sense to tax more the people that have more money, you aren't going to get as much money from a single-mum driving her 1.2l Opel Corsa compared to what you can get from a programmer/lawyer/real estate investor who drives a 80,000 euro Tesla.

but dont you dare tax that corporation! they are living on the cents!

>Max Baumhefner, staff attorney of the climate and energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, says the reality is much different, because most of the 1.3 million EVs on the road today were bought as used cars. That’s because they’re typically bought on leases, then sold used after two to three years to low- and middle-income people, many looking to save money on gas, he says.

Not sure how things are in the States, but over here in Europe when I search for an electric vehicle in the 4,000-6,000 euro range [1] I get mostly just toy cars (i.e. the Renault Twizy). And low-income people generally go for 2,000-3,000 euro cars, even lower. Maybe things are better for this class of people in the States and they can afford to purchase used EVs with starting prices of $10,000 or $15,000, can't tell.

[1] https://suchen.mobile.de/fahrzeuge/search.html?damageUnrepai...

Car prices in my area would generally consider $10-$15k for a relatively new EV vehicle off lease as a deal, I just checked prices around here and confirmed that. A new ICE car here can easily set you back over $30k for a small car and upwards of $60k for a large truck. Unless you're making less than average in this area the price of an EV is only slightly more than an ICE vehicle used in the same condition.

One idea: eliminate gasoline taxes and charge every vehicle an annual road use fee based on the weight of the vehicle as part of their registration renewal.

Burning gas in cities has many externalities that are not priced in sufficiently even with the current taxes. Taxes should be raised, not lowered.

Burning gas anywhere should be practically unaffordable, given we are likely making large parts of the planet unhabitable.

Making gas unaffordable makes large parts of the planet uninhabitable in the short term.

We could ramp up public transport very quickly given the will to.

Not in the places that would become uninhabitable without gas.

You did say large parts of the planet, what large parts of the planet couldn't adopt public transport?

I didn't say that, but all parts of the planet that are too sparsely populated and have poor infrastructure. There is little point in having a bus if there are only a handful of people per square kilometer. There are large parts of the planet that don't have a reliable power grid either.

IMHO we should just abandon those areas and give them back to nature.

Power is actually pretty easy to solve compared to transportation. You can reliably generate either wind, water, or solar anywhere on the planet and store it locally. You're right though that centralizing populations tends to be the most efficient use of resources.

Sure, but that should be priced separately by each city in the form of congestion charges.

That would just be a large subsidy for anyone that drives a lot.

Petrol taxes are probably the fairest way to tax ICE based on usage short of having black-boxes in every car (which would in turn create a nice black market in itself for fiddling them) - heavier and less efficient vehicles naturally use more and so get charged more, the more you drive, the more you burn, the more you pay.

I can't see a fairer way than that for ICE at the moment.

The OP wants to eliminate petrol taxes on ICE vehicles to treat all vehicles the same way. Right now, an EV doesn't pay any petrol taxes, which are often used to maintain road infrastructure.

Since nobody is making EV heavy trucks yet and EVs are a small minority of road traffic they account for approximately none of the infrastructure wear and tear.

It's a pure cash grab. If they need more money they should be up front about it rather than being smiley and trying to portray it as EV owners not paying their fair share. I say this as someone who buys a heck of a lot of gas.

Fee based taxation at the vehicle level is there to slow electric adoption and benefit a few stakeholders, period.

The obvious way to raise money from all motor vehicles today is LPR. The Federal government already has an extensive network of LPR and high resolution cameras on the interstate highway system for criminal and customs surveillance, and most states have extensive networks that can easily be scaled.

You could even use LPR for demand based taxation, instead of mileage based systems, put fees on peak usage or vehicle class.

The current system is significantly flawed anyway, because state policy varies, especially with trucks. A truck operating in New York may be gassing up In Pennsylvania, and be out of the jurisdiction of the state for safety and other regulation. Also commercial vehicles use flags of convenience for registration... rental vehicles are often registered in Arizona and Indiana.

short of having black-boxes in every car

You could have people self report. You could even include it on the tax returns. Require people to fill in the current odometer reading on every car they own and then do spot checks.

Just make ev owners get “emissions checks” like everyone else. Mileage can be read there.

Not all states perform emissions checks. Almost all perform safety checks. No idea why EVs would be exempt from these so your solution would probably work.

That's massively regressive. In the United States, poor people don't own significantly fewer cars than rich people. Jay Leno is a rare exception.

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