Congress Wants You to Pay $130 a Year Just to Drive an Electric Car | Hacker News Reader

Congress Wants You to Pay $130 a Year Just to Drive an Electric Car

insideevs.com

20 points01-_-60 comments

Sounds like a bargain. In the UK we'll be paying £0.03 per mile from April 2028.

This is a direct replacement for the gasoline taxes which pay for our roads, so $130 for most drivers is actually a bargain in the US too.

EVs are also much harsher on roads because of their weight.

The weight gap between EV and ICE is often exaggerated.

In fact, within ICE vehicles, the gap between sedans/hatchbacks/compact crossovers and giant SUVs and trucks is larger, and yet for some reason we aren’t taxing drivers of Suburbans and F-150s accordingly.

If we applied this logic fairly we should be pushing people to right-size their vehicles regardless of fuel type.

We are discussing a gas tax, and there is a strong correlation between gas consumption and weight, which implies more taxes for trucks and SUVs

That's true, but gas consumption by weight is more of a linear function, while road wear follows the fourth power law by axle weight.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

As an example:

A 2026 Honda Accord LX has a combined gas mileage around 32 mpg and a curb weight of 3,239 lbs.

See: https://automobiles.honda.com/accord-sedan/specs-features-tr...

A 2025 Ford F-150 XLT has a combined gas mileage around 20 mpg and a curb weight of 4,941 lbs.

See: https://www.edmunds.com/ford/f-150/2025/features-specs/

Keeping things simple and calculating the axle weight to the fourth powers of both vehicles, the F-150 causes 5.4x the road wear of the Honda Accord while using only 1.6x the gas.

The reason this doesn't matter so much, though, is that the types of trucks used for shipping goods, when loaded, cause on the order of 10^4 the road wear, dwarfing any differences between standard commuter vehicles, which is why commercial trucks have to stop at weigh stations.

The big trucks also have a lot more tires / tire surface area, to mitigate that. IIUC, the weigh stations are to ensure they aren’t overloading the truck, so that road wear is comparable instead of being that vastly greater

We absolutely are doing that at the state and local level. Vehicle registration fees vary by weight and type of vehicle most places.

Redditors claim there is no evidence the weight is relevant to the wear rate of the roads, since weights have become comparable to a similar car and generally less than the average ICE truck, but that the superior acceleration of EV can be harsher on intersections https://www.reddit.com/r/electriccars/comments/1do2rtu/what_...

Well, that's a US-only argument.

so $130 for most drivers is actually a bargain in the US too.

I’d have to drive an EV about 35% more miles each year to make it to break even on tax versus our 35 mpg ICE car. It’s no bargain, it’s punishment for driving an EV.

EVs are also much harsher on roads because of their weight.

My Hyundai Ioniq 5 weighs less than the most popular vehicle in the US: the F-150. I don’t see those getting special taxes.

The F-150 is not the most popular vehicle or even truck. The F-Series is, which includes all the bigger versions and fleet models.

How do you pay more taxes on EVs when you factor in gas taxes?

How do you pay more taxes on EVs when you factor in gas taxes?

Huh? Simple math?

$MILES_PER_YEAR/$200 (EV tax in WA) vs. $GALLONS_USED * $0.18 in the ICE car. I pay more in taxes to run the EV in a year than I do for equivalent miles in a 35mpg ICE. IOW, if I drove the Scion xB all the time, I’d pay less tax.

The alternative is them checking the odometer each year on the EVs, which would be fairer, but I feel like Americans would complain that’s an invasion of their privacy or something. Or it would upset the rural voters who have disproportionate power in this country.

Modern cars are full of phone home shenanigans, many of them with cameras and ToS that allow them to observe everything and sell all of the data to anyone that can rub two cents together. IIRC laws coming into effect next year mandate even more of it. If Americans care about privacy of their cars they have a funny way of showing it. The odometer read would actually be a great privacy improvement compared to that.

I think they should just tax tires. It sounds easier to administer and if it was a natural tax it would alleviate the main weakness it seemed to have: That's you buy your tires in the state with the lowest tire tax.

They already check mileage when they do emissions. Not sure if the state gets the info back.

I fully support the government reading my odometer during every single emissions check of my EV ;).

What about your insurance company?

I drove 15,000 miles last year and paid 33.3 cents per gallon to my state. That’s around 833.33 gallons of gas so I paid about $278 dollars. $20 more. Assuming 18mpg.

For an EV I’d pay $258.90 extra to register.

My state must be factoring in average miles driven to come up with the $258 number instead of charging per mile driven.

Trucks get worse mileage so they buy more gas so they pay more gas tax. They don’t need a special tax, they already pay more.

Speak for your Tesla. My i3 weighs slightly less than my partner's Mini Cooper.

$130 is the amount of tax that an average person would pay if they drove in ICE car that got under 19 mpg. No way is that a bargain.

That seems like a more logical system? You should be paying miles x vehicle weight since that’s what tear roads.

Does it matter if the car is electric or not so much for road tearing? I'd thought the wheels and engine capabilities would matter more, but I'm not car expert.

I think the idea is with ice vehicles you can tax the gas, which is a convenient roll-up summary of the above. But EVs sidestep all that.

EVs on average are heavier than ICE vehicles, and road damage scales with weight very quickly, but that’s not to say EVs are out there tearing up all the roads. Semi-trucks, construction equipment, heavy machinery towing, etc all do way way more damage than passenger vehicles by a wide margin.

> EVs on average are heavier than ICE vehicles, and road damage scales with weight very quickly

So then tax based on weight if that's the differentiator of the damage done? I guess in combination with mileage would make most sense, and add in a scale based on net worth too to make it extra goodie.

Historically, we've taxed based on gasoline usage, which is a pretty decent proxy for both weight and distance traveled, so it ends up being a road use tax. EVs don't use gas, so we need to introduce new road use taxes specifically for them.

Where this new fee has issues is that it would charge EV owners roughly double the average amount paid by ICE owners in federal fuel tax, and wouldn't consider how much driving a given EV is actually doing.

I wonder if it makes more sense to just add a tax on tires. Tire wear for most vehicles should be proportional to actual weight [1] and mileage, modulo tire quality. So just slap a tax on each tire quality type and there is no need for a system to record the mileage and weight of every car.

[1] Commercial vehicle weight is strongly determined by the cargo load.

...except now you've incentivized everyone driving on bald tires and, unintentionally, killed a bunch of people when it rains.

Hey, at least this isn't a comment section about the states, which rate safety based on how the driver fares in a collision! Which would mean the people least likely to be hurt are the ones that are trying to cheat the tax, and the ones injured or killed are external to the vehicle.

Except of course it is: Americans externalizing costs to save a buck seems to have become endemic

If we go by the fourth power rule that is usually cited, it is kind of shocking how fast damage goes up with weight.

For example if you replaced a typical 40 ft transit bus containing 60 passengers going from point A to point B with those same 60 passengers in 60 subcompact electric SUVs, such as Hyundai Kona SELs, the 60 cars going from A to B would do do about 1% of the road damage that the bus would.

This also leads to an interesting possibility. Suppose you had a large city where everyone was driving the ICE version of the Hyundai Kona SEL, and then they all switched to the electric version. The electric version is ~500 pounds heavier than the ICE version, and by the 4th power rule would cause about 70% more road damage than the ICE version.

However, gasoline use in that city would plummet, and so the number of miles driving by the gas tanker trucks that supply the gas stations would plummet to.

Those trucks are way way way heavier than cars. The reduction in road damage from those trucks driving less would in many cases outweigh the increase in damage from everyone switching to a car that weighs ~500 pounds more.

Fuel normally includes taxes that pay for roads.

Electricity doesn't, and it's not very fair to just add those taxes.

18 wheeler type trucks do over 80% of the damage to roads. They could pay for it all and we'd all simply share the cost in the price of goods, and collection would be vastly simpler and cheaper.

But, there wouldn't be the opportunity for asking for political favors, so don't expect anyone who likes you having to beg to champion such a process.

But how does the government know how much you drove?

Odometer check during annual inspection

Yep you can look up a car's MOT status publicly, including their mileage history at each inspection. I wonder if they'll send a bill from that report, or expect garages to act as tax collectors.

Though currently you don't need an MOT until a vehicle is 3 years old, so they'll to add something there.

More state discrimination against people in Scotland and rural communities...

I mean sure, it's not perfectly, 100% fair, but do you have a better plan, or just complaints? Because rural populations seem to want to have their cake and eat it too - living in a rural area to save money and have additional space, without wanting to pay for the extremely expensive roads that enable their lifestyle, or even to admit that it's infeasible for everyone to live that way

More driving both increases the likelyhood of damages to vehicles or people, and makes this a useage-based fee - so while not perfect, it's the closest we can realistically get without becoming mired in PR mis-understandings or complications, technicalities, and enforcement difficulties.

Rural populations do not have "their cake". They are already charged high prices for goods and transport and punished for not living in unhealthy dense urban environments. This just boosts their cost of living even more. Some people like things like fresh air, space and feeling a connection to the area they live in.

It seems that our rulers want little more than us living in tiny microhomes in filing cabinets, staring at a screen all day for all our needs, while they get to enjoy the countryside as some kind of safari park where they can do what they want. Or at best trapped into some panopticon where you will be prevented from travelling more than a few miles/kilometres away. Most modern urban environments are soul-destroying hellscapes which is why some people don't want to live in them.

Now do parking

Absolutely dishonest framing. Road maintenance is funded via gas tax. Thus EV owners should have to pay a different way. They certainly use the roads, so why would this be controversial?

The headline is intentionally inflammatory, but that's pretty much what the article says.

FWIW, the gas tax also only pays a fraction of the actual cost of maintaining roads.

Road maintenance is funded via gas tax.

Federal gas tax is generally used for new roads, not road maintenance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Trust_Fund

If you want an “honest framing”, raise the federal fuel tax to match inflation, then we’ll talk about EVs. Plain and simple, this is just a move to punish EV use.

my understand was that the federal govt won't be collecting this tax. they are mandating that the states collect it, and if they refuse there is punitive language about withholding federal transportation grants.

I read your link and it does not support your assertion. In fact it implies the opposite:

> […] attempts […] to suspend the federal gas tax, without which […] would have halted efforts to repair and expand the Federal highway system.

(emphasis mine)

Did you have a specific quote you intended to point to to support your claim?

I already get ~fined~ charged an EV tax by my county and state. So now I get to be triple-punished for having an EV?

They should get rid of the gas tax and tax all vehicles by weight and miles driven.

This would effectively attack people for living in rural areas, rather than urban sprawl because they have to travel further...

If we want to take Congress earnestly, heavier users of roads should pay heavier taxes.

You could argue urban drivers are currently subsidizing rural drivers because they travel fewer miles in a year.

My opinion is this should be up to each State, and that this is federal government overreach.

How do? Gas usage is roughly proportional to miles drive, so gas tax is already roughly a tax on miles driven.

They are using the resource the most.

Punish the users that use it the most? Sounds fair

I'm a totally biased EV owner, and I agree that it's only fair that EV owners pay for the roads they use.

But it's annoying to see the US government find a new way to discourage one of the most clear cut ways to reduce fossil fuel usage. If things were fair, we would be taxing gas for its contribution to air pollution and climate change.

We should be doing everything we can to encourage EV adoption, but the current administration is interested in doing the exact opposite. They apparently found a way to do so which gets bipartisan support.

Let in Chinese EVs.

Sure, Detroit which is on life support from making shitty overpriced cars would cease to exist. But EVs would take over the US in just 5 years.

How many miles of federal roads do you drive in a week?

flat rate taxes are never fair. It should be based on a per use basis. either have a tire tax or some other per mile use tax.

Switch everything to a weight-mile tax, if we want to be fair.

Nonlinear.

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