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?
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.
> […] 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?
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.
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.
FWIW, the gas tax also only pays a fraction of the actual cost of maintaining roads.
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.