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judge2020

Slightly related is road wear. According to "Pedal Fort Collins", a 8,600 pound vehicle does over 20x the damage of a 4,000 pound one[0]. More pieces throughout the past few decades have also covered this [1-2]

0: https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh... (source is dead, so a blog reference is all I have)

1: https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...

2: https://www.gao.gov/products/109954

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I wonder why you don't pay more if you use a heavier vehicle.

Some states do charge you for registering heavier vehicles, and there's the HVUT for the heaviest road users like trucks[0].

0: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/091116/pdfs/fhwatri-fold.pdf

One of the cantons of Switzerland does this, making it much more economical (in tax terms) to have a very lightweight sportscar than an SUV

In Australia we do pay more for vehicle registration, but only a little, and number of engine cylinders is used as a proxy.

Also, taxes make up about half our fuel price, so heavy vehicles tend to pay more tax.

Belgium does (did?) the same.

Engine size was the number one driver of tax.

Then turbos came along and engines started to shrink, so tax went down.

As an answer to that CO2 taxes were introduced.

Then companies started to aim for <= 99 gram CO2 / km, with super-small diesels.

But then the report of VW's number fudging came along which caused a shift towards gas again.

I don't know now how it works today, with EVs and small gas ICEs with big turbos etc. I do know that they mandate DEF on diesel cars, and OPF on gas cars.

Maybe not in the USA but you would in the Netherlands and I bet elsewhere as well.

For example, monthly tax for a gasoline car that weighs between 1051 and 1150 kilograms is EUR 125, for cars weighing between 2151 and 2250 you would pay EUR 378.

In the U.S. the reason is the Republican party. If we pay an amount to register a vehicle based on weight due to the increased damage it does to the roads then it will be portrayed as a radical environmentalist plot to get rid of SUVs and trucks. Republicans as love the idea of pay-as-you-use government services except when it comes to infrastructure. For example, it’s OK for a $25 traffic fine to include $100 in court costs but don’t under any circumstance expect one to pay more for gasoline to pay for road maintenance.

Your average techie/doctor/lawyer/manager who thinks he needs a 4Runner for his 2-kid household is not going to be dissuaded by hundreds of dollars here or their when their mortgage is thousands a month. You need a huge tax. That huge tax would be punitive on all sorts of "legitimate" activity.

If it was a politics thing and not a "everybody who looks into it with any depth decides it's dumb" thing then some state like MD, RI, CT, or MA would have taxed it already.

Furthermore, we're talking about "damage" (in sarcasm quotes because expected and normal wear isn't damage in any normal sense of the word) power equation here[1]. So basically everything that isn't a class 6/7/8 truck is inconsequential for a road that has any portion of its traffic made up by those vehicles. Since those trucks basically run the economy someone has to pay for it. There's really little political will to engage in an obvious exercise of "picking who to screw" like that vs an imperfect but fairly fair fuel tax.

[1] https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...

You are correct that the desire to subsidize commercial activity plays a role. Republicans may not have power in a state like CT but there is still a desire not to be beat up on an issue that will play well to the masses. For instance, Michelle Obama advocated for better nutrition for school lunch programs. No reasonable person could possibly have seen fault with this but after Fox News attacked her over this it became a dead issue.

EDIT: It is definitely not a dumb idea as you suggest. Many counties have sensible policies on this issue and yet they manage to trudge along without much trouble. As I said it is OK to advocate for pay-as-you-use government so long as people like you don’t pay for your negative externalities too often.

Various places have been doing exactly this for decades and while I'm sure there are plenty of complaints, it's not exactly something you hear about on FOX news.

For example: https://ezbuy.chicityclerk.com/faq-vehicle-sticker

   Motorbike   $50.52
   Vehicle with curb weight of 4,500 lbs or less with a payload capacity of 2,499 lbs or less.  $95.42
   Vehicle with curb weight of 4,501 lbs or more with a payload capacity of 2,499 lbs or less.  $151.55
   Vehicle, Truck, pickup truck with ... a gross weight of 16,000 lbs or less or with a payload capacity of 2,500 lbs or more.  $224.51
   Truck or vehicle with a gross weight of 16,001 lbs or more with a payload capacity of 2,500 lbs or more.  $505.16

Interestingly, minivans are most commonly the thing that surprise people. The lower trim levels usually qualify for the $95 annual sticker but the upper trim levels just barely cross the threshold and must pay the $151 annual sticker.

I don’t think anywhere in the U.S. taxes for registering vehicles and gas are enough to pay for roads. These charges do not pay the “true” costs of vehicles’ damage to the roads.

It's a tricky thing to implement as the road damage is typically quoted as being proportional to the fourth power of axle weight. That means that either the heaviest vehicles would become economically unviable due to the taxation (which I think should be the case) or most consumer vehicles would be too light to make a meaningful taxation contribution.

A 2000 pound vehicle driven an average of 15000 miles per year does $x of damage to the roads. X is a calculable figure. Tax the vehicle to at least pay $x. If it is in the pennies then tax that amount. That a heavier vehicle does more damage just means calculating the appropriate amount to tax it.

It could work out that it costs more to implement the smaller vehicle tax than it would recover in revenue. Also, there's a major problem with logistics companies having considerable power over politicians, so I can see problems with getting them to pay for their considerable share of the road repair costs.

This is because their campaigns are paid for in large part for by oil and gas companies. These positions they take are sadly rational given this. The solution is campaign finance reform.

As a Seattleite, I don't think it's fair to blame Republicans in this case: my city, county, and state are dominated by Democrats who promote Vision Zero[1] yet refuse to do anything about these obscenely large (and growing) vehicles.

[1]: https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs...

Michigan is the home of the US auto industry and that state is filled with politicians from the Democratic party. Ford and GM are making some mighty big vehicles and I'm sure their elected representatives (Democrats) are doing their best to encourage it.

Eh, I'm a Michigan native, and I don't think the two situations are similar.

Where's the disconnect? The OP claimed it was purely a republican move. The reality is that the powerful people in Michigan are Democrats and the state's top tier companies make some of the heaviest cars on the market. If the Democrats wanted to do something about it, they could make the cars illegal and also put some of their citizens out of work.

It’s an issue that Republicans can attack Democrats on. Change is difficult for many people. Political calculations have been made to:

1. Not give an opponent an easy way to attack you that requires the masses to employ nuanced reasoning to understand why that attack is wrong.

2. Say things to your base to keep them voting for you even though you have no intention of implementing those policies.

It's safe to say that no Republican is going to win city/county/state-wide office around here, so the "attacks" are moot. For example, the state's hurtling towards passing an emergency AWB into law, all while Republicans yell and scream. So, again, the Republicans ain't the problem.

Are there any policies that Democrats could enact that would make them lose support? The answer is clearly yes. Is taxing vehicles enough to pay the true cost of road maintenance such an issue? I don’t know but it may be one that Democrats don’t want to tangle with. Such taxes are done at the state and national level and I think this is an issue they don’t want to give Republicans a win on.

Edit: The nation as a whole has shifted very much rightward the last 50 years. Instead of saying Republicans I should maybe say “right leaning politics”.

Office-chair-stealing Tim Eyman and his supporters would likely get an initiative passed that disallows any limits or weight-based fees. It's not a winning strategy, unfortunately.

Not likely. The Washington State Supreme Court has Eyman in check.

But the reality is here in the States it's not the EVs that are the weight problems - it's the mega trucks and mega SUVs. The vehicles people drive today are comically large compared to those we were driving when I was a kid.

They're within a few 100lbs +/- of a Model X?

A model X is also too large.

In the states, this is generally covered by fuel taxes. Older and heavier vehicles use more fuel, which generates more tax revenue. The model breaks down with EVs though, which is why some states have started to implement EV specific ad valorem taxes.

Road wear is proportional to the 4th power of vehicle weight. Fuel economy is closer to linear to weight.

Is tire wear roughly proportional to road wear (in states where chains and studs are illegal)? Increasing tire tax would have negative effects (encouraging people to wear their tires dangerously thin, etc.) Encouraging tire manufacturers to use more durable formulations would likely increase road wear, but reduce amounts of tire dust pollution.

In any case, it's not a perfect solution, but does a tire tax more closely approximate taxing road wear vs. a fuel tax or an annual flat tax based on vehicle weight?

I oversimplified a bit. There are other taxes as well (e.g. trailer, number of axles, etc).

In this context, 20 times the damage is effectively 20 times 0. The real damage to roads comes from the big trucks like Garbage trucks and 18 wheelers.

Exactly. My contact in CalTrans tells me that because public roads are built to handle the big trucks, the wear caused by any vehicle under 10,000 lbs is effectively zero.

Similarly, why don't we pay more to drive a vehicle that is more dangerous to both pedestrians and other drivers.

That cost gets wrapped up in your insurance rates. If your car actually does cost more then people with your type of car will pay higher rates. If you as a driver are more likely to hit other cars or people, then your personal rates will be higher.

That only works if you (or your insurer) are actually held responsible to injuries done to people.

In most of the US, you can pretty much kill people with impunity with a car as long as you aren't doing something grossly in violation of traffic laws. Drivers have almost completely externalized the cost of injuries caused their excessively large vehicles.

All the parking garages in NYC do this.

Source: I spend a lot of time in NYC driving a minivan which counts as “oversized”.

:-)

Road damage is roughly proportional to the fourth power of vehicle weight. So it's really the heavy trucks that have the most impact.

https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...

Very curious how governments will approach taxing these as gas tax revenues shrink. I know in some places your registration is higher but after talking with a coworker who pays more to register his EV, he admits it's negligible compared to the amount he'd pay in gas taxes with an ICE---just not an "invisible" tax like gas is. Doesn't seem as clean (ha) as Fed gas taxes, state, etc. Federal level car registration sounds a bit nightmarish, though I guess a registry is probably already being managed given the EV tax credits. Anyway, just thoughts.

Huh, I didn't know that damage to roads is greater than linear on vehicle weight, reportedly to the 4th power.[a] Hadn't thought about it.

In hindsight, it kind of makes sense, because all the force (weight) is applied at only four points, where the tires touch the ground.

[a] See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35525557

The tax should be based on the weight divided by the tyre contact area. All hail my new 12-wheel, flat-tyred HumVee.

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