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Comment by ip26 | Hacker News Reader

One of the simplest arguments against it to me is basically to look at the landscape. For example, in the US, ballpark 1% of cars are electric. Meanwhile, the flat federal fuel tax is not indexed to inflation & hasn't been increased in almost thirty years. Yet everyone is in this panic about how EVs are going to cause a huge revenue shortfall!? I'm not opposed to EVs paying their share, but something is rotten in Denmark.

Anyway, shifting fuel taxes onto tires might make sense. All cars use tires, no matter the fuel, it requires no odometer reading, and a tire has a designed application & load range which ought to translate reasonably well to anticipated road wear.

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2 things. First, pretty sure it’s been discussed here previously(edit: and is down thread), but I believe the wear on the road is like the 4th power of the weight.[1] here’s a chart describing it. with that considered, I don’t think it makes sense to even really charge passenger vehicles in the US, when we have huge fleets of 80k pound big rigs on the road(and the limit is uncapped with overweight permits)—charge them.

Second, the problem with tires is that depending on what and where you drive you’ll use them considerably faster. I live a few miles down a very windy chip-sealed[2] road, that I have to drive down any time I go anywhere. As a result(best I can tell) my tires tend to go bald 10k-20k miles early. Chip seal is used because it is cheap, seems regressive that I’d be taxed at a higher rate for a poorer road.

[1] https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipseal

Who says you should tax directly based on wear anyway? The bigger scarcity is often traffic in any case. Some roads have higher costs than others. etc.

Maybe we want to lower transport costs by charging trucks less. Maybe we want to encourage electric car viability by charging them less. I mean, tax policies have outcomes. Doesn't it make sense to target outcomes we want?

Obviously the road needs to be paid for and fuel taxes won't work if people don't buy fuel. That said, I think it's inevitable that whatever comes next is a policy... encourage some stuff, discourage other stuff, benefit certain people/sectors and such. ATM, encouraging electric vehicle adoption with a fuel tax exemption doesn't seem crazy.

It does create a regressive dynamic, where new electrics are subsidized by legacy ICE. By the time that represents more than a rounding error the fuel tax deficit will be big enough that the tax system will be changing anyway.

A better approach is probably a time-of-purchase tax. =

Good thought, but that might incentivize not replacing worn tires

This is exactly right. You're in a sense taxing safety!

Yeah, thinking more you are right. The tax would be quite substantial too, and probably drive a large black market.

yeah, once we get to 25% adoption (or something) we can talk about how badly EVs are hurting fuel tax revenue. in the meantime, jack up the fuel tax in a planned, regular way, and let the market decide :)

That might be rational, but it’s highly unpopular with the 99% of people who don’t drive electric cars. This is virtue signaling,

Incentivising some behaviour is basically always unpopular with the group currently doing the opposite behaviour.

So you're saying the 1% of people driving electric cars should pay for the climate change caused by the 99% that are not?

The 99% of people who drive ICEs and can afford an EV should get one.

Many good things are unpopular. Shutting down coal mining operations is unpopular with miners. Staying at home to avoid spreading a disease is unpopular, but we have to do it anyway because it's important.

Switching to EVs is important for slowing down climate change, and should be incentived (incentivised?).

What those 2 Australian states did translates directly into accelerated Climate change and Coastal cities sinking.

Jack up tax and let the market decide? Those seem inconsistent.

If you make it too expensive to change tires, people will drive for much longer with worn out tires, risking lives.

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