California electric vehicle drivers will lose carpool lane privileges | Hacker News Reader

California electric vehicle drivers will lose carpool lane privileges

latimes.com

28 pointsPaulHoule33 comments

"Beginning Oct. 1, motorists with a Clean Air Vehicle decal will no longer be able to drive solo in carpool lanes because the program was not extended by the federal government..."

So it's a special EV privilege that is going away (because of the Feds). Now they'll be treated like other vehicles. Not as bad as the headline could be interpreted.

Well, no, they still won’t be taxed for miles driven per year like gas vehicles are. Not yet, anyways! Probably two or three years left on that watt-o-mobile owner loophole (that Priuses have been exploiting for years, but with far less road damage per mile traveled due to being hybrids). Or maybe less if the feds starve California of transportation funding in petulance at whatever.

> they still won’t be taxed for miles driven per year like gas vehicles are

If you're referring to gasoline taxes, California taxes electricity too.

> with far less road damage per mile

I agree, let's tax all vehicles by weight. I'd love to see all those pickup trucks and full-size SUVs pay.

Pickups are taxed by weight.

I believe they mean the gasoline tax not the registration cost which isn't a huge increase between size

Solar charged vehicles, such as with a Tesla powerwall, would pay zero dollars of tax per mile driven if you depended on an electricity tax. Doesn’t really work out in road repair costs to leave a massive tax loophole open.

By weight and by tire count! Have to made sure to deal with four-tire axles and such, not to mention electric semi trucks.

I believe the California pilot determined that odometer reporting and occasional DMV drive-thru checks will be the solution. I’d post the newsletter to HN the next time it comes out but this isn’t really the sort of group that appreciates taxation.

> Solar charged vehicles, such as with a Tesla powerwall

Paying tens of thousands to avoid a few cents per gallon doesn't immediately strike me as a great deal.

"According to Caltrans, Californians with gas-powered vehicles pay about $300 a year in state gas taxes."[1]

This is a tiny minority of EV drivers.

> Doesn’t really work out in road repair costs

For that matter did the gasoline tax ever fully cover repair costs when EVs weren't around? I always had the impression that funds were needed from other sources too. It's interesting to see so many people get religion about "making drivers pay their fair share" after EVs became popular.

> By weight and by tire count

Even better!

1. https://abc7.com/post/california-looks-eliminate-gas-tax-rep...

I’m not specifically concerned about EVs as I am vehicle mass X tires on road — it’s just that EVs further piled on the problem, and so of course they’re a focus of attention now. doi.org/10.1007/s10098-022-02433-8 estimated 20-40% more road wear for EV vehicles of equivalent passenger capacity as gas vehicles, for example. If someone had started making gas SUVs out of osmium because it’s more crash resistant, I’d be just as annoyed at the loophole exploit of that as I am about that extra untaxed mass-wear on roadways being batteries. (But if you solve the battery mass problem, the flat fee is still unfair in favor of high mileage drivers versus low mileage ones, so a mileage-mass tax will always be the correct outcome.)

However, the real threat to roadways that hasn’t yet been fully realized is EV autopilot tractor-trailers; without gas taxing, without mileage taxing, and without the constrain of having to pay humans to drive them, the state highways are going to get shredded into gravel in a decade.

Both have to be treated; passenger vehicles wear down roadways in residential zones that semi trucks don’t enter, and semi trucks wear down highways vastly more rapidly than any personal vehicle of any weight can.

I participated in two phases of the mileage pilot program described by that ABC article over the past ten years and look forward to its eventual implementation in literally any form whatsoever. I truly hope that their final form ends up being mass-wheel-mileage taxation with a transit credit for public transit and 10+ passenger vehicles, so that lightweight Priuses and buses pay little and heavyweight Rivians and semi trucks pay lots. Whatever their first steps towards that outcome is, I’ll take it, whether it’s gas tax or EV tax or truck tax corrections or any combination thereof. The status quo is unfair in multiple ways and they’ve got their work cut out for them.

EVs pay a registration surcharge in lieu of gas taxes. And it works out to something crazy like 20k equivalent miles per year.

Here in California, 20k miles of driving at 30mpg (so, highway only, which is of course unrealistically high) is $600 in gasoline taxes per year, with California state and local taxes at $0.612/gal; meanwhile, the EV registration gas tax makeup fee is $118/yr, which is equivalent to 192 gallons per year of tax, which at 30mpg is merely 6k miles, not 20k. California average miles driven is estimated at 11k.

So: the EV loophole is costing the state half of the road maintenance tax budgeted for road wear in subsidies paid to EV drivers, assuming that all gas vehicles get 30mpg at all times. I don’t expect that gap to last much longer now the Federal government is openly hostile to the state. Hooray for silver linings, I guess.

If anything drivers are subsidizing trucks

That is also happening, yes! Lots of problems coexisting to our general detriment in that regard.

Fun while it lasted. I foresee a lot of cops pulling over Teslas in the carpool lane because they didn't realize the program is over

Since Newsom doesn't like the program ending, I have a suspicion that the enforcement will be lax.

There will be some sort of alternative pay to play privilege fast lane for rich people.

Please don’t post cynical fantasies here.

That’s how it works now, for 5 bucks you just zoom down fastrak. Always blows my mind seeing 911s sitting in traffic instead of using it

$5? Rush hour on 101 is $20 to drive the ~10 miles between Brittan and Embarcadero.

Off topic, but prompted by your 911 comment.

I had a couple of friends buy cars at the same time - one bought a new Subaru, and the other a used 997 Porsche 911. The 911 cost more, but not a large difference in price. In that part of the world, the Subaru (and almost all new cars) loses 40% in the first year in depreciation, and continues to drop off at 10% - 15% per year. The 911 has more expensive maintenance and insurance, but has so far, and could easily continue to be depreciation-proof. The difference in fuel is less than you might think too given how much lighter (and risky in crashes) older smaller cars are. So far the 911 has turned out to be by far the more sensible financial decision. Obviously there are much more financially-prudent alternatives to both, but I find it interesting how older interesting cars are looked at as frivolous purchases, but new utilitarian cars aren't.

Your comment was presumably talking about new or expensive 911s, and I don't want to criticise what you said at all. I just wanted to say something to hopefully encourage some people to consider sillier, more-fun cars as perhaps not a crazy option.

There are a million practicality reasons why this wont work out for most people, but a lot of families have two cars. I really like seeing the 2nd car being something in that realm of interesting but nearly as reliable, costs more in maintenance but less in depreciation, less practical but more enjoyable. It feels to me like that has gotten less common, and a lot of people think every vehicle needs to be as practical as possible.

Oh yeah I’m a big fan of 911s (and fun cars in general) that’s why I’m always looking!

But I’m also a new Maserati owner and your Subaru friend is doing rookie depreciation numbers above…

40% depreciation in the first year is a myth. Show me one year old vehicle you can buy for 40% off.

Sometimes you would be lucky to see the supposed 10% first year depreciation Numbers

It seems that I was talking about a place with one of the highest depreciation rates (1) in the world, so what I said may not be widely applicable at all. I didn't realise it varied so much by country. I should have remembered that New Zealand has unusual prices because it gets a lot of used car imports from places like Japan and Singapore who get rid of their cars quickly.

1) https://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/news/89145417/new-zealand-h...

This is an old study which points to New Zealand having quick depreciation in the first year. Looking around briefly, I think depreciation reduced substantially since COVID, and I think those numbers in that study may have been too high anyway (the study found over 50% in the first year). I'm interested in what happened, so I'll try and find what the reality is when I get a chance.

Already exists in some parts of southern california as toll lanes for single drivers.

They already announced a 2 month "grace period" where it won't be enforced

Good. I always found that weird. To me, the carpool lane is there to encourage drivers to put more people in their cars in order to reduce traffic. Allowing a single-rider EV to use the carpool lane doesn't do that.

It just felt like a ham-fisted way to incentivize EV purchases, when there are better ways to do that.

It makes sense if you view the HOV lane primarily as a way to reduce emissions, not traffic. This is also why e.g. single-rider motorcycles are often allowed to use HOV lanes as well.

buying an EV does not actually reduce emissions like magic, unless the owner drives that car for a looooong time. Like 10-15+ years.

Manufacturing an EV car uses a lot more emissions than an ICE car initially, due to the huge battery.

If the goal is to reduce emissions overall, then target incentives appropriately:

- tax deduction at purchase

- tax deduction for drivers of old (10 yr+) EV vehicles.

This incentivizes EV purchase AND driving that vehicle for a long time. In contrast, allowing EV drivers to use a carpool lane does no such thing IMO.

> buying an EV does not actually reduce emissions like magic, unless the owner drives that car for a looooong time. Like 10-15+ years.

I find this timeframe surprising. I did some quick searches and there are models like GREET that suggest the break-even point is much sooner than that in the US. It is difficult to know for certain, of course, as there are many variables.

Regardless, it is of course better to incentivize long-term ownership as well. I think of HOV access as similar to a tax deduction on purchase. It’s a cheap way to provide a carrot for initial EV adoption.

I don't understand what the federal clean air program has to do with anything? California can make whatever rules about their carpool lanes they want.

Just a guess, but the federal government probably paid for the roads, not the state. With that funding, are strings

The Clean Air Vehicle (CAV) program requires federal approval under Section 166 of Title 23 of the U.S. Code.

The federal government is notnot be extending the program, which means the underlying authority for the program expires.

California passed legislation to extend the program, but this extension is contingent on federal approval, which was not granted.

I was wondering the same thing, so thanks for the explanation. Disappointing that the article didn’t bother to explain it.

From Section 166 it looks like the state can also convert an HOV lane to an HOT lane and set the toll amount. The contrarian in me wants to believe there’s some ridiculous loophole in there…

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