That argument would actually make more sense for roads so I see how you'd want to tax gas instead of car ownership, but even there I think it could still be acceptable to spread it out like that.
As more people disconnect then sure the base price might go up but why not, the other ones don't need the grid, so why pay? And as for public infra like street lights, that will just get heavier on taxes. This is something I see happening over decades rather than years, so there will be enough time to figure this out.
The more potential energy you pack into a volume, the higher the chance the energy will be released at a time not of your choosing and in a fashion that will make you sad. We put our product in industrial zoned places where the worst case scenario for a fire is pre-planned to not be catastrophic and so that no homes will be lost. Why put your house at risk? So you can cosplay as Henry David Thoreau and take some stance against your power utility?
Aka people do dumb stuff all the time. And mostly survive. Frankly, this isn’t likely to even be top ten from an actuarial basis.
Far more often. Battery fires can be much harder to put out, but gasoline fires are no slouch frankly.
But still, seems pretty clear that EV’a are likely no more risky and possibly considerably less so in the garage. Thanks!
These recalls from Ford, GM, and Kia are each millions of vehicles. And the number of these recalls is going up: https://turnto10.com/i-team/consumer-advocate/serious-park-o...
It's always been a significant risk; why do you think there are strict building code regs for the garage area of a home?
Clearly not in any sort of engineering capacity given you wildly misused the second law of thermodynamics, which has nothing to do with potential energy, but the flow of heat from hot areas to cooler areas.
Second: energy density has nothing to do with how stable that energy is. 12lb of plutonium could level a city, but not if it isn't in an extremely precisely engineered device.
Third:potential energy and volume, you say?
Do you own a riding lawnmower in your garage? Those have about 2 or more gallons of gas, which is about 66 kWhr of energy.
Pour that out onto your garage floor, strike a match, and let me know how "sad" you are when your garage is leveled, your house structurally damaged, and you're dead in your neighbor's yard.
Do you have a gas grill, and do you keep a spare tank in the garage? 20lb of propane is equal to almost 130kWhr of energy.
Do you keep a 5 gallon jug of spare gas in your garage? 165 kWhr.
So. You were saying?
If you keep a 5 gallon jug in the garage, your risk is higher than if you don't. If you keep a lawnmower in your garage, your risk is higher than if you don't.
Like I said: the higher the amount of potential energy, the greater the risk of it being released in a way that will make you sad. It's a straightforward derivation from thermo.
Off grid solar is exceptionally rare. The grid still serves a purpose unless you’re willing to buy a lot of batteries and always moderate your usage.
Realistically, solar users won’t be disconnecting from the grid in large numbers. It doesn’t make financial sense to buy massive battery banks to avoid a small monthly grid service fee, even if battery prices drop significantly more.
The fear of everyone dropping off grid isn’t realistic.
Then they are generating substantially less pollution and CO2 than the idiots driving around in their dick-compensating machinery that gets 12mpg, and society should incentivize that.
Hint: look at all the costs to society from internal combustion vehicles. Chiefly, global warming, and the health costs (and lost productivity) from the pollution.
The nice think about gas taxes is that they’re mostly proportional to the mileage driven and the weight of the vehicle, two factors that determine contribution to road wear.
EVs tend to be heavy but not contribute at all to gas tax. A separate EV tax for road maintenance is reasonable.
Like we have a short segment of road in my town that’s almost exclusively and regularly used by garbage trucks, which are ~10x the weight of a car. I don’t think the road gets repaved 10,000x more often than other roads though?
"Road work" is almost entirely paid for by overall tax revenue and only a tiny fraction comes from fuel and other use taxes like registration fees. It doesn't include things like police/fire/ems response to crashes.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-13/debunking...
In my state, you get a 90 percent discount on your excise tax if your vehicle is of a model year newer than the current year. I don't see anyone getting up in arms about that, but someone buys an EV - which pays taxes on the electricity it uses - and people scream blue bloody murder they're "cheating", because among other things, we don't look at the total cost to society that a car has.
No, friend. These regressive taxes are because conservative idiots in dick-compensating machinery that gets 12mpg are pissed that people who made the intelligent and environmentally conscious choice are being led around by the nose by the oil cartels.
...who are subsidized, and those subsidies are rising: https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidie...
https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subs...
WA state had a “genius” workaround for it. I remember being shocked the first time I got my annual car registration slip for my (then) new EV. It was a flat $150 fee + $75 “transportation electrification” fee, on top of all the normal annual registration fees. For more expensive cars like Teslas, proportionally it is not that ridiculous (it “only” raises the fees by about 30-40%). But for something more affordable like Nissan Leaf, it essentially doubles the registration fees (aka increases by almost 100%).
Luckily, they seem to be experimenting with it still. Just saw that starting this upcoming July, they are rolling out a voluntary program where those fees above get waived, if you opt-in and pay 2.5 cents per mile. No idea how they would track it (on a technical level; e.g., using what device? how the data is processed? does it count only in-state miles or just in general?), and that’s the part that I am honestly worried about the most.
But that seems at least like an interesting try.
1. IDK where you live, but most people pay quite a bit for grid itself, often more than for actual power.
2. With batteries the grid can be about 10x smaller.
Roads are notionally supported from general taxes in the UK anyway, not fuel duty.