Optimal tax is closer to $126/ton, so my “shooting from the hip” was a bit low.
Carbon credits in Europe are trading for 50EUR/ton ($58 USD) currently.
(nobody is currently paying anywhere near the true cost per ton of emitted carbon)
Right now european gas prices range from 1.2 to 1.6 euros per liter depending on the country (eastern europe tends to be cheaper and western more expensive). And that's for 95, 98 tends to be a few cents higher.
That's 5.3 to 7.1 USD/gal. 90c/gal would be a significant but at the end relatively minor increase: it's less than the increase in gas prices since the start of 2021.
Sometimes I feel like these discussions about EVs are strangely divorced from most people's lives. We will likely make our next purchase an EV purchase, and I think the cost of waiting on long trips probably has to be considered against other annoyances of ICEs, but the economics of this are a major reason more people don't switch to EVs. Even the cheapest ones still cant compete against the ICE market as a whole, especially when you consider the used vehicles that will be in circulation for some time.
Adding costs will just make it more difficult for people to afford anything.
If people want EVs to take off, they need to incentivize purchasing them, not tax the ubiquitous alternative. If the carbon costs are real, manifest it in decreased costs for the alternative. Otherwise it's all theory.