Republicans in Congress Want a Flat $200 Annual EV Tax | Hacker News Reader

Republicans in Congress Want a Flat $200 Annual EV Tax

arstechnica.com

13 pointsm46317 comments

At some point they do need to replace the gas tax they use to fund road related things. Would be nice to see some discussion about what the best way to do it is, though for a first pass I guess this is fine?

California is considering a mileage tax:

https://ktla.com/news/california/as-electric-vehicle-use-gro...

Doesn’t each vehicle have an annual car registration fee already?

That varies by state. In Georgia it is $20 plus a mailing fee of $1 for the tag itself. My electric car has an over $200 registration fee for the same reasons that are being proposed. I’d need to drive a hilarious distance every year to be on even terms with the gas taxes paid to the state.

On the bright side I pay 1/3 the cost for gas per mile, so there’s still a lot of financial incentive to stick with my EV.

Tennessee also introduced a $100 annual fee that includes plug-in hybrids.

True. Also, I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but since EVs are usually around 25% heavier than ICE vehicles, they are actually harder on roads than equivalent gasoline vehicles. And it gets worse, the damage to roads scales roughly with the fourth power of axle weight (per the AASHTO “fourth power law”). So even a small increase in weight leads to a lot more wear.

By this logic, we should be putting a higher tax on commercial vehicles then. Except the proposed bill exempts commercial vehicles, so...

In Virginia, I pay a lot higher rate for my EV than my wife does for her ICE vehicle. Which, I agree with another comment that I may be paying more than if I was paying the gas tax, but I understand the reason for it and don't have a problem paying for it. That being said, VA does have a program in place for the rate to be based on "use" (or mileage), but I haven't fully investigated that yet.

I wouldn't have an issue with a more Use based kind of tax for ALL vehicles as long as the money is specifically keyed to infrastructure (ie roads) spending and not a pot of gold for other programs to take from.

However, where this proposed bill really grinds my gears is that they're proposing having it pegged to inflation, which seems no problem for them to do, yet they haven't figured out how to peg the Minimum Wage to inflation yet, so...

The fourth power law also means that cars represents a near negligible amount of wear and tear compared to trucks. Following the fourth power law, semi-trucks should be taxed over 160x more per mile driven than your average car.

What's the intuition behind fourth power? Looks like it was mainly derived from experimental testing but there should be some physical explanation as to why we'd expect 4th power right (e.g. you can have some intuition for square/inverse-square laws based on arguments of surface area). Is it really 4th power, or is it the artifact of curve fitting?

"At some point", yes. This isn't an attempt to bring in funding for roads, it's a way to remove every EV incentive they can, because somehow EV's have become a political issue. We have people who don't even know what head gasket is, but somehow have BIG opinions on EV and ICE vehicles.

All vehicles should be taxed annually based on GVWR and distance driven without exceptions.

For additional comments see the earlier submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43846005

I honestly think they should be memed for this. They always spout anti-tax.

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