NC Electric Car Drivers Begin Paying $100 Annual Fee

What a great way to discourage people from engaging in a behavior that you want them to engage in.

Why not make up for the (arguably inconsequential) loss in revenue by making the people with the less desirable behavior (purchasing gas-guzzling, polluting vehicles) subsidize the desirable behavior? In other words, make up for lost revenues by increasing gasoline taxes. If it gets to the point where that's not enough, increase gasoline taxes again, and generally keep increasing them until people aren't driving ICE vehicles anymore.

When it gets to the point where even that doesn't cover it, charge vehicle registration fees based on vehicle weight, since that's the true measure of the vehicle's contribution to the wear and tear on the roadways.

CO, Nebraska, Virgina, and Washington also have such fees.

The issue is basically that gasoline and diesel consumption was used as a proxy for travel miles in order to pay for road maintenance and the scale used to relate miles to gallons is no longer accurate even for gas-powered cars (as average economy has improved). Obviously electric cars are an easy first target, since passing a tax increase is much harder than targeting a small group.

The users of a resource should, of course, pay for that resource. And there's a compelling logic that the people who cause maintenance to be required should be the ones charged for it.

The issue is, Leaf drivers are very much not the people who damage roads: Leafs are somewhat light cars (a bit more than a Civic, substantially less than SUVs). Cumulative road damage is linear with the number of miles driven and quartic with vehicular weight. Gas taxes roughly capture the linearity from miles driven but only a fraction of the factor from vehicle weight.

If the Republican leader quoted in the article is actually interested in bridging the gap between gasoline tax revenues and expenditures on roads and ending the subsidy the public provides for expensive private decisions, he should look toward charging more of road users in general than a small minority of a couple thousand (it probably costs as much to implement and collect this tax as the revenue it brings). Instead of, you know, sticking taxes to the people whose consumption choices he finds so damn hippy and unpalatable.

(And, yes, I oppose government subsidies for electric vehicles too, whose environmental benefits should be captured by more efficient carbon taxes or permits.)

This was always on the cards, the only surprise to me is that someone has moved on it so fast.

The major problem facing governments over growth of electric cars is loss in tax revenue currently enjoyed from fuel taxes. In most places the amount of fuel tax collected far exceeds that which is spent on road infrastructure. Governments simply take activities with inelastic demand as the best place for collecting revenue. Because fuel was primarily used for transportation, which has a very inelastic curve, it always has been heavily taxed. Same goes for airline travel and smoking. Flying and tobacco taxes all normally bring in far more revenue than they cost the government - because taxes are levied on a basis of extract sufficient feathers from the goose with a minimum of hissing.

The problem with electric cars (as far as revenue collection goes) is that you can plug them in anywhere. But putting extra broad-based taxes on electricity consumption is electoral poison. So how to tax vehicle-destined electricity? If electric cars start to supplant liquid fuels in large numbers, governments are looking at a major revenue source drying up.

Adding a fixed charge seems like a simple but problem-ridden way of solving it, but makes more sense than trying to do things like have specially-taxed outlets for electric cars.

Personally I think a per-mile charge based on vehicle size is the correct way to go (regardless of fuel type or vehicle class). Drive less, pay less. Drive smaller vehicles, pay less. But doing so naturally attracts the ire of those with a problem being tracked. And so on we go. Taxation is imperfect.

My guess is that they are doing this before electric-car ownership becomes a big group. That way a smaller charge can be introduced and normalised before the group gets too large. It's always easier to incrementally creep up a tax rather than introduce a new one.

Great idea, let's also tax: bicyclists, carpoolers, the unemployed (damn them for not commuting), and drivers of fuel-efficient cars of all kinds.

They should have a "battery tax", given that someone has to recycle and dispose of the waste. For a car that lasts only 8 yrs, this is an $800 tax. The total cost[1] of a camry is about $8K a year, or $64K over the timeframe. With about $16K in petrol costs baked in, of which maybe 1/8 of the costs or about 2K would be inflated by petrol taxes. This makes the savings of driving an electric car still about 60% on just taxes/government fees if you lump them together. Its really netither here nor there in the big scheme of things and won't move the needle either way.

[1] ie. operating costs and depreciation, net basis.

The point of taxing gasoline to pay for road upkeep is, from what I can tell, because it accurately reflects 'how much you drive' -- sort of. Perhaps a shift needs to be made in what is taxed and how, in order to accommodate petrol-free vehicles.

One option is tolls. Nobody likes tolls.

Another option is this fee - but it doesn't accurately reflect the wear on a road generated by the car.

A tire tax? Higher inspection fees? The latter would discourage the cars that need inspections from getting inspections due to the cost.

Maybe we need to wholly rethink how we fund public transportation infrastructure - not just roads, but railways and bridges and aeronautics.

Wow. That's absolutely disgusting.

"We're not getting our gas taxes and destroying the environment in the process, so guess what? You owe us the $100 we would have forced out of you annually had you of purchased an all gas vehicle for $10,000 less."

I thought property taxes were meant to pay for local roads?

Yay red states.

auto pay with bitcoin whenever you use a road. done.