Hacker News Reader

Gas tax has always been a proxy metric for mileage in order to implement usage based costs to help offset the many billions of dollars California spends maintaining roads every year.

Gas as a proxy for mileage breaks down with widespread EV usage, so even though they are a benefit for many reasons with incentivizing, they still require expensive road upkeep so should not be immune from usage taxation.

View on HN

Or, spitballing here, let the gas tax reprieve be the incentive and don't offer a rebate for EVs. Regardless, gas tax is a stupid way to pay for roads. Everyone uses roads, whether they drive on them or not.

And, they won't be repealing the gas tax. They'll be adding a mileage tax on top of the gas tax.

> And, they won't be repealing the gas tax. They'll be adding a mileage tax on top of the gas tax.

If that incentivizes more people to buy EVs and drop their gas vehicles, that's great. And I say this as a driver of a gas-powered car with not-the-best MPG.

Of course, the problem with this is that new EVs are expensive, and the kinds of people who drive older, inefficient ICE cars are the kinds of people who probably can't afford a new EV. (Not sure what the used market is looking like, though.)

Gas tax is how we originally built the whole highway system actually (that and bonds).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com