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Comment by pclmulqdq | Hacker News Reader

35,000 mi of driving is not anywhere near out of the question if you're a daily commuter who takes road trips once in a while. If you're driving a truck or a non-hybrid, it's also a lot less mileage. It sounds like this is actually close to what you would be expected to use.

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Just because a small percentage of drivers drive that much each year doesn’t make it a reasonable number for the general case.

It sounds like this is actually close to what you would be expected to use.

Not even close to what the average driver drives.

The average American driver gets about 25 mpg and drives about 15-20k miles. That's exactly in line with the tax rate here.

Seems unlikely.

55 miles/day, 365 days a year? Also, look at lease mileage limits.

The average American car does not drive 20k miles. 12,500 is the average yearly mileage.

And it's an EV, a closer comparison should be something more like a hybrid. It's not a giant truck.

But it weighs as much as a giant truck

It weighs about as much as the smallest base model F150. Optioned out models and other trim levels easily hit 1,000lbs+ heavier.

Meanwhile that base model equivalent weight F150 gets about 24mpg and thus pays about half as much gas tax while doing the same amount of damage driving the average mileage. Further proving my point, I pay twice the state fuel tax for an equivalent weight pickup truck. Is that fair?

But also, isn't the whole point of the pickup truck to load it down? If all it's doing is carrying 1-4 people it's whole life, seems like a lot of waste. I'm told people buy trucks to actually load them down a lot and not just commute and get groceries? So while it's about the same weight dry and unloaded shouldn't it's weight really be quite a bit more in practice? Or are we all agreeing now trucks are just for commuting and getting groceries?

Now you've moved the goal posts to about half of your original claim. And it's still not accurate (links have already been provided elsewhere in this thread). And the only thing I've owned in the last 30 years that gets 25 mpg is a camper van (and, no, that thing doesn't move anywhere near 15K miles/year).

It's far away from the average of around 12,000. Few cars drive 35,000mi.

The average driver also doesn't get 35 mpg driving regularly. The average driver probably gets around 20 mpg, and that would make this distance about 15000 mi.

The kind of people choosing an EV wouldn't get a 20mpg car, it's an unfair comparison.

They also chose a car that's extremely heavy (by virtue of the battery), so they create more road wear per mile than the average American car. The point is that tax rate seems fair.

The ICE I would have picked otherwise is only 100kg lighter and gets 40mpg.

And you’d be paying gas tax

Far less than what I'm paying with the EV, which is my point!

> With that information, the British newspaper calculated that BEVs [battery electric vehicles] could expose roads to 2.24 times more damage than gas cars.

If that's true, then 12-15k miles in an EV would be equivalent to 27-33k miles in a gas car.. so "taxes equivalent to 35k miles" isn't far off.

Ref: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/bevs-could-also-damage-ro...

> With that information, the British newspaper calculated that BEVs [battery electric vehicles] could expose roads to 2.24 times more damage than gas cars.

If that's true, then 12-15k miles in an EV would be equivalent to 27-33k miles in a gas car.. so "taxes equivalent to 35k miles" isn't far off.

Ref: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/bevs-could-also-damage-ro...

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