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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

A lot of states have passed these laws, but it seems like a silly way to solve the problem.

When you register your car, you have to say how many miles you drove, and it gets verified every few years with smog checks.

Why not just charge a per mile-ton fee? Maybe give freight trucks a break so we don't kill shipping, or only charge them for their empty weight? Have some of the fee go to the state and some go federally for redistribution (like gas taxes work now).

Then eliminate the gas tax as a source of funding for road maintenance and shift it to a carbon tax? And make EVs come in for a "milage check" since they won't have smog checks.

Then everyone pays fairly for road maintenance based on how much they use the roads, and people driving ICE vehicles will pay for the externality of their pollution through their gas consumption.

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A gas tax happens at the pump. The most logical & fair tax to apply is a surcharge at the charging station. It doesn’t apply for home-chargers tho but a surcharge there could theoretically happen as well (not that I would encourage it)., or the gov could encourage home solar then by removing car charging surcharges for solar home owners

My state has no way of finding out how many miles I drive. No smog checks, etc.

So some other mechanism would be required.

There is no recurring required checks that the vehicle is safe? That’s where you’d check and log it to the vehicle registry.

Not previous commenter, but my state only has a periodic check in some of the counties. Much of the state has no recurring check.

Not that hard to add a milage check, or just take your word for it. Eventually you'd get caught lying if they make cops write down how many miles you have when they give you a ticket, or when you sell your car.

A solution might be to allow your automobile manufacturer to provide the state authority (who charges for mileage) on a cadence with the data, scoped only to mileage data.

Tesla has the mileage data for all of my vehicles. They could even provide mileage driven data by state. I wouldn’t mind clicking an approve button, and have my credit card charged when needed. This is already how my tolls work (albeit with a transponder instead of vehicle telemetry).

Many people would be wary of any sort of mandatory collection of data like that, by a third party transmitted without their knowledge. Also, fleet turnover is like 10+ years, so it would take a long time before enough cars had that.

Change is a constant. The data is being collected regardless, we’re just haggling over the oversight and governance of the data. Taxes should be collected equitably to be disbursed to where road use takes place.

Those without telemetry can be provided an exception process until fleet turnover is complete.

It shouldn't be being collected. Fleet vehicles may have an excuse, ones sold to non-fleet buyers should not. J ust because you can chuck some memory, a processor,and an antenna into a car does not mean you have the right to the data stream from that car post-purchase. Especially given the fact that in the U.S., Third Party Doctrine basically negates a Constitutionally guaranteed right. (4th Amendment).

A manufacturer does not have a right to post-sale telemetry. They never did, and the only thing that has given it mainstream acceptance is the public's lack of vosibility and understanding of just what it meant was enabled byadding a few key circuit boards to complex equipment.

I friend of mine had a switch installed on his leased car odometer/speedometer so he could shut it off. He was extremely careful to keep maintenance records consistent with drive time (performing his own oil changes outside normal service). To me the risk would be way too high, but it could be done in the early 2000's. Not sure about today.

Sure, there are people who break the law all the time, and some get caught. But most people are honest and law-abiding most of the time.

To be clear, what your friend did wasn't just unethical, it was straight up illegal. In fact, since it was a leased car, he not only broke the law about illegal vehicle modifications, but he also committed fraud against the leasing company.

Also, doing something like that today would be very hard, because very few cars still have mechanical odometers.

Oh completely agree. FWIW it was a digital odo/spedo on a Lexus.

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