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Comment by asdff | Hacker News Reader

This, along with however road taxes are to be paid for without gasoline taxes will be the ugly truth about EVs that few want to answer. Right now they are severely undertaxed, to the point where if they were taxed at the full rate they should be for both road wear and for local government to roll out and maintain EV charging infrastructure, registration fees might end up being enormous. Imagine if you are broke and it cost $2000 a year to register an EV versus $100 to register your $2000 ancient honda civic, that's an easy choice to make for a lot of people.

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> This, along with however road taxes are to be paid for without gasoline taxes will be the ugly truth about EVs that few want to answer.

Few politicians want to touch the topic, but really what makes sense is a VMT and GVWR tax. If you use a vehicle to travel more, you get taxed more. If that vehicle weighs more, you get taxed more. Odometers at registration/inspection time and vehicle make/model can provide this information.

However this is politically unpopular, because it punishes behavior that has become widely accepted (traveling exclusively by car, owning larger cars/trucks) in the US and distributes the cost of infrastructure maintenance to those that use it more.

> However this is politically unpopular, because it punishes behavior that has become widely accepted (traveling exclusively by car, owning larger cars/trucks) in the US and distributes the cost of infrastructure maintenance to those that use it more.

It is also a regressive tax. Living close to work in a modern city is a luxury, and housing close to mass transit is much more expensive than housing far away from any such amenities.

It is, yes. But by accurately associating the costs of such infrastructure maintenance closely to those that cause it, people might actually realize that we're building our urban environments terribly inefficiently.

People can carpool, older cars are lighter (less tax because lighter weight), and look for alternatives and demand them. We should be encouraging that behavior instead of incentivizing financially, environmentally, socially, and health destructive ways of transporting ourselves.

Here in Georgia there’s a flat $200/year “road use” fee for EV registration. For most EV drivers that is probably more than the equivalent gas tax paid on an ICE car.

One additional factor is that EVs weigh quite a bit more than comparable ICE cars, which increases road wear.

If EVs ever become widespread the tax situation will have to change and they will probably end up paying higher taxes for this reason.

I'm not sure if major accidents happen frequently enought to move the needle, but EV wrecks can be much more difficult to respond to due to electrical fires.

That'd be fine if it applies to every vehicle; some incentives NOT to drive a massive SUV would be nice. They kill pedestrians at a much higher rate than smaller cars.

I'm absolutely in favor of charging SUVs heavier fees.

Most states are now levying usage fees on EVs that meet or exceed the revenue that would come from gasoline sales. In most cases it is in the $100-200 range but a few states are using punitive rates. Your $2000 rate is in the lacking justification range.

This would cover the state portion of gas tax, but is anything being done to compensate for the federal portion? The federal gas tax is 18.4¢/gal and the average state tax is 31.67¢/gal, according to https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=10&t=5.

Why would it cost $2000 to register an EV? 12,000 miles/year at ~30 MPG is 400 gallons of gas. At $.50/gal tax that’s $200/yr in tax revenue the state would need to make up in additional EV registration fees.

It's almost like building our entire country around the idea of everyone needing to own a motor vehicle was not a good long term plan or something.

It never was, but now we have to figure out how to unwind that

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