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Comment by _djo_ | Hacker News Reader

While my initial reaction was negative, after thinking through it a little it does seem reasonable to look into a replacement for the fuel levy as a road usage tax now that the number of ICE cars keeps falling.

EVs don't have any less impact on road deterioration and maintenance needs. If anything they cause more damage as a result of their higher average mass and acceleration.

Whether a per-mile/km tax is the right approach or even feasible is another question, but I don't think it's entirely wrong to be considering some sort of road usage tax for EVs that's proportional to the fuel levy.

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If you're doing this to offset damage done to the roads, something to keep in mind is that passenger cars are totally irrelevant in terms of road damage compared to large trucks, because road damage is a function of the fourth power of axle weight ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law ).

That may be true, but heavy goods vehicles are already taxed in the UK according to a sliding scale of their mass and number of axles in order to account for their damage to roads. [0]

[0] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64ca1f035c2e6...

Nice. Those amounts seem kind of low, though? Not sure if I'm reading it correctly. A truck that weighs 20x the amount of a passenger car, with 2 axles, appears to pay 300 pounds per year?

Also, weirdly, a 40,000 kg truck with 2 axles seems to be taxed less than the same truck with 4 or more axles.

These are annual registration taxes, not usage taxes.

Ideally you'd want a sort of usage tax also based on this, but implementation has been difficult to achieve. [0]

[0] https://www.lafabriquedelacite.com/en/solutions/weight-tax-a...

Yeah, a fixed tax, but based on weight, which is sort of a low-resolution usage tax.

300 pounds is more, but not very significantly more, than car registration in many US states.

Perhaps more points of contact is better for the road?

Yeah, it should be, but it seems they're taxing more axles more for the same weight, so it seems like something else is going on there.

Yes, but I think OPs point is if you're taxing vehicles according to their contribution to road damage, then cars should efficiently be taxed at 0 (I don't know I'd that is true, but it seems to be the point their making). If heavy goods are 100% of the damage, they should cover 100% of the tax.

Now that said, I'm not convinced they are actually 100% of the damage. I've seen many residential streets in need of repair that essentially never see heavy vehicle traffic. And I'm also not certain that taxes should be based on cost added vs value provided - but it's a reasonable discussion to have.

But again this seems short sighted. Electric vehicles (vs ICE) remove a ton of negative externalities from society. And while they do bring others (in how many of their materials are sourced) they are a big net positive. Don't disincentivise them because of a change in fuel tax revenue.

Yeah, weather/time do a lot, it's definitely not all trucks. And a lot of them are maintained just so they're available for everyone, whether they're being heavily used or not. So I don't actually think that trucks should bear everything. But I do think they should pay a large fraction of highway maintenance budgets, partly so that they're not unfairly advantaged versus cargo rail.

Mostly putting it out there so that people don't start thinking that EVs need to be taxed more highly than ICE cars because they're a bit heavier.

> I've seen many residential streets in need of repair that essentially never see heavy vehicle traffic

Maybe just the freeze-thaw cycle?

That fourth-power is more complicated then your summary suggests.

For example, it's also a function of road design, which is why a high-speed limited access road is able to handle significantly higher loads than a suburban cul-de-sac.

Consider that a bus weighs a lot more than a car, so a simple 4th power analysis suggests it will cause several orders of more damage than if everyone drove their own car.

However, busses tend to run on bigger roads which are better designed to handle the weight (with the expectation that people will walk a few blocks to get to the stop), rather than residential streets which are mostly designed for private vehicles and the occasional delivery truck/van.

On those roads, heavy passenger cars are relevant to road damage.

Ah, good point, thanks!

Zero taxes are a good incentive for drivers to switch to EVs, so if the goal is to get people to switch, it might be a better idea to wait. Call it a subsidy.

UK is planning to ban sales of ICE cars in 2030... So it does make sense to start implementing the system now to be ready then. 5 years is short time for this type of system.

Worth noting that hybrids (which are basically still ICEs) will be allowed until 2035.

we could also just accept the fact that the roads are a public good, and not spend the extra money to try to weigh exactly who is causing the most wear and bill them separately. if I live in an urban center and bike everywhere, all my goods are still arriving by road. I hope that they're there when I need to be trucked by ambulance.

"and not spend the extra money to try to weigh exactly who is causing the most wear and bill them separately."

To the contrary - that's a good reason to subsidize the construction of of infrastructure, but having some sort of incentive to use less damaging forms where possible makes all kind of sense. Part of the reason for the stupid-sizing of consumer vehicles in the US over the last decades is because the incentives are all messed up.

You need to somehow pay for the roads. And it is never small sum. Per mile tax seems most reasonable. It can also be set on vehicle mass. Though likely cargo does need some subsidising as entire existence of modern society depends on it.

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