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