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Comment by rogerrogerr | Hacker News Reader

If you can charge at home, they’re an amazing deal. I think the vast majority of households with n >= 2 cars would be best served by [1..n-1] of them being an EV.

Even a ten year old Leaf for $4k is still useful to soak up the around-town driving that an average family does most of their miles in.

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There's a dead comment by 486sx33 that says:

> Charging at home is part of the problem. They need to separately meter power for cars and increase the rate and add a road maintenance tax based on vehicle weight

I'm not sure why it was killed because that actually is an issue that has not yet been satisfactorily solved.

Many states pay for road construction and maintenance via a per gallon gasoline tax. Since EVs do not use gasoline they have turned to other ways to get EVs to help pay for the roads, usually by adding a flat annual registration fee.

In my state that flat fee is $150. That is equal to the component of state taxes on gas that go to roads on 270 gallons of gas.

If I had bought an ICE (non-hybrid) earlier this year instead of an EV I would have bought either a Honda CR-V or a Honda Civic.

I mostly do city driving. With the CR-V I'd have to drive 7300 miles to pay $150 toward roads. It would be 8600 miles if I mostly drove highway. With the Civic it would be 8600 city or 11000 highway.

I actually drive under 2000 a year, so if my EV driving patterns end up being the same as my ICE patterns I'm going to be paying a lot more toward roads than I would have had I gone with an ICE car.

It does look like my mileage will go up with the EV, possibly up to 5000 miles a year, but even then I'll be paying more toward roads than if I had bought an ICE.

I'd much prefer to have a mileage based road tax.

I'd be fine if they just looked at my odometer whenever I renew my registration and charge me then, but for a lot of people having to pay their entire share of road fees for their last year of driving at once would be difficult.

Separately metering my home charging and taking care of the road fee there would be great.

I'm satisfied with the flat fee system. The cost difference is at most $150 per car per year, which is not much to argue over. It is more like eating into the savings from switching from gas to electricity, rather than an additional burden.

The premise of being taxed by mile driven is arguable. People benefit from roads even when they do not drive. AFAIU light passenger traffic has little bearing on the resultant maintenance costs, that most wear comes from heavy trucks.

I do not want separate meters complicating EV charging and accounting.

They could tax the tires; if multiple states agreed to do it at the same time it'd work decently well.

Gas was a useful proxy (and let them tune cars vs semi trucks) but tires would work about as well.

Tax by vehicle weight and miles driven per year is theoretically the most fair. Allowing the spreading of payments over the year would soften the blow.

I used to advocate for this, but it’s a regressive tax. Semi trucks do by far the most road wear, so would bear the most taxes in any fairly distributed system. Those trucks are how groceries get to stores, and groceries comprise a far higher proportion of a poor person’s spend than a rich person. Maybe you get some second order effects, but the first order effect is “grocery tax”.

For a portion of $150, do you really care all that much?

I’m much happier to pay the flat rate (we might be in the same state) on registration; the mechanism for enforcement already exists. I don’t want the state to grow a new facility to regulate how I use electricity - sounds like a permitting, inspection, and surveillance nightmare.

I bet the cost to permit and install a whole different metering system would be several multiples of $150.

AFAICT electricity companies like Octopus already have separate EV rates. They give you a lower rate for EV charging in return for flexibility on when your EV is charged.

Charging at home is part of the problem. They need to separately meter power for cars and increase the rate and add a road maintenance tax based on vehicle weight.

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