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Comment by onesociety2022 | Hacker News Reader

onesociety2022

Most of the states already have an EV tax. For instance, WA charges $225/yr for registering an EV. The issue is unlike gas tax, it’s not based on actual usage. And the flat fee they’re charging is way higher than the gas tax anyone driving a gas car with avg fuel consumption would pay for driving the national average of annual mileage.

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I pulled some numbers and I get $239 for the average car and average use based on [1], [2], [3]. Using the same numbers the Federal part would be an additional $79. Do you have different numbers for Washington state? Like, do people drive less than 10,952 / year or have more efficient gas vehicles?

[1] WA gas tax $0.554 (Federal gas tax is an additional $0.184. California is $0.7092.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State...

[2] Average fuel efficiency 25.4 mpg. https://gocarlife.com/average-gas-mileage-for-a-car/

[3] 10,952 average passenger + light duty miles driven per year. https://truedrivingcost.com/articles/how-many-miles-american...

The math doesn’t work out very well for Washington, and I’m leaving out federal gas tax in the math below.

Washington has a gas tax of 55.6 cents per gallon. The tax on 405 gallons of gas in Washington is $225

Average mileage driven in US looks to be around 14,000 miles (plus or minus 500 miles), which means you’d need a car that averages 34.5 miles per gallon to pay less in gasoline tax than you’d pay in EV tax.

I drive around 5000 miles a year and still pay $225/year for my EV. However, Washington is moving to a mileage based system for EVs, hybrids, and high economy cars. They are just going to go by odometer readings, which is about the only way it will work in the USA.

And they’re planning to charge 2.6 cents per mile, per https://wstc.wa.gov/studies-surveys/road-usage-charge/

So that’s $364 per year for 14k miles. Vs. the $225 currently paid as an electrification fee.

It’s capped at $225, at least during the pilot.

Do you know how they plan to get the odometer data? Thanks.

Some states require annual vehicle inspections.

The honor system I think, Washington doesn’t require annual inspections.

Washington doesn't.

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