Tennessee's Republican Governor Bill Lee is considering a set of new road-related rules to fund a proposed transportation infrastructure bill. On the docket: raising the fee electric vehicle owners pay to register their cars. Currently, EV drivers pay $100 in the state every year; under newly announced budged scheme, that would triple to $300.
The reasoning is that car owners reliant on fossil fuels pay a gas tax every time they fill up at the pump, and those proceeds (mostly) go toward the budget for statewide highway and road maintenance. EV owners don't pay the gas tax. Tennessee's transportation commissioner, Butch Eley, said the proposed $300 annual fee would put EV owners in line with state estimates of what gasoline-users spend via the tax, which Gov. Lee has declared he will not raise.
[...] It's easy to forget that car infrastructure costs money (lots and lots of money), but every time drivers use a road or rely on a traffic signal, they're benefitting from a very expensive system built for their use. And in fact, car ownership is already heavily subsidized compared with other forms of transportation. According to one analysis from nonprofit Canadian media outlet The Discourse, society pays more than $9 for every $1 a driver pays in commuting, through infrastructure, accident liability, noise and air pollution, and congestion. Buses, biking, and walking all eat up much less public funds for the same amount of miles traveled.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07, @02:02AM (7 children)
> society pays more than $9 for every $1 a driver pays in commuting, through infrastructure, accident liability, noise and air pollution, and congestion.
Please take infrastructure (roads, bridges) off that list. It's been well established that road damage goes with something like the (weight on the tire)^4 -- yes, to the fourth power, maybe even 4.5 (from memory of reading highway engineering papers). So essentially all the road damage is done by heavy vehicles, even if they are vastly outnumbered by cars and smaller SUVs.
Now, the new BEV Hummer from GM, that's another story, it weighs about 10,000 lbs (~4500kg), or about 3x a car. Here in NY State, annual registration is a function of weight, and I think that a 10K pound vehicle would probably come in around $300/year.
(Score: 2) by Username on Wednesday December 07, @02:53AM (1 child)
Does NY make a difference between commercial and recreational vehicles when it comes to weight? Taxing semi and tractor drivers seem like it would drive up the cost of goods.
It is nice to see a politician close a tax loophole for the rich. Taxing registration makes far more sense than taxing electricity. Which will probably happen down the road anyway, but by then hopefully i'll be dead.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 07, @03:37AM
It would increase the cost to transport goods, certainly. But so do lots of things, like the Saudis feeling like they want more money. And there's also the argument that it would increase the incentives to switch from long-haul trucking to, say, freight rail, and we all know the freight rail industry is doing absolutely fantastic right now ... oh.
OK, never mind that, but it would also encourage retailers to favor things made closer to home, e.g. grocers would be more likely to buy more from nearby farms than trucking stuff in from Chile, which isn't the worst thing in the world.
I'll also mention I'm in a state that already has something like this proposal - there's a hefty fee for driving a hybrid vehicle, and an even heftier one for driving an electric vehicle. Now, you might think that this is motivated by complex math about the need to pay for road construction, but based on other stuff in that bill (e.g. killing previously existing incentives to add windmills and solar panels to the energy grid) it was actually motivated by a desire to stick it to those environmentalist hippie types. Oh, and the money doesn't go to road repairs, it goes to subsidizing the state's nuclear plant operators, who just happened to bribe the entirety of the majority party in the state legislature at a total cost of approximately 2% of what they got in tax money (the bribe recipients were busted, some of them had to pay a fine that was smaller than the bribe they got).
I'd also challenge the claim that this is hitting "the rich": For example, doing a quick price check on Edmunds, it looked to me like hybrids like the Toyota Prius and EVs like the Chevy Bolt were actually somewhat cheaper than a Ford F150 of similar age and mileage. Sure, Teslas are stupid expensive, but that's not the only people you're hitting with this.
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(Score: 2) by EJ on Wednesday December 07, @03:17AM
EVs weigh more than CFVs.
(Score: 3, Informative) by darkfeline on Wednesday December 07, @04:18AM
Road damage is merely a subset of the total infrastructure cost to support driving. Traffic lights, signs, road design, bridge maintenance (the bridge itself and not the paving on it), drainage, tunnel inspections, etc. I'm sure a civil engineer could list many more.
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(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday December 07, @09:52AM (1 child)
While it's true that heavy trucks do most of the direct damage, this is not the only factor. Weather also plays a role. Plus, heavy trucks don't need the sheer volume of roads that we have, nor do they need all of the amenities.
Weight should be a factor, though. A 5-ton Hummer should pay a lot more than a 1 ton Mini. You could probably get away with making the tax proportional to weight.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday December 07, @05:41PM
I'd think it should be at *least* proportional to weight squared, preferably higher. Even if it's just ^1.1 it establishes the precedent that weight should be weighted super-linearly.
Mileage should factor in as well. The person that drives a couple of miles per day round trip to work doesn't cost nearly as much in infrastructure maintenance as the person that chooses an hour-long commute. It's probably not linear though, since both cost the same amount of residential street maintenance for their own neighborhood.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday December 08, @08:26PM
There are systems in place to charge heavy commercial drivers significantly more than passenger vehicles. These are implemented as part of IFTA (fuel/energy taxes) and also per-axle taxes. The latter can be staggering, particularly in the Northeastern US. Traveling the New York Throughway from exit 1 to 21B (124 miles) in a five-axle truck/trailer combo in I-87 costs $50 in tolls, $35 with Ez-pass, and that amount can double during peak travel times. Even the off-peak rate is more, per mile, than many non-owner-operator drivers make for driving the route. :/
(That, bad roads, and traffic are why many drivers specifically look for routes outside the Northeast.)
(Score: 3, Informative) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday December 07, @06:19AM
Congestion is the most obvious indicator of the usefulness of cars. Counting that as something paid is just a sign of confusion at The Discourse. Additionally, accident liability is a cost born by owners through insurance (and there's a ripoff), not by society.
Government and society generally, and in fact modern civilization, benefit from cars, a fact that The Discourse chooses not to see.
We don't expect only parents ( or students ! ) to pay for public schools, and in the county where I live schools are almost 2/3 of government expenditures. Why be pissy about car fees being proportional to the damage cars cause without considering the benefits?
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday December 07, @09:49AM (3 children)
Road infrastructure in basically all Western countries has been largely funded by fuel taxes. Now that electricity is becoming the fuel, this isn't going to work any longer.
The obvious solution - and where we are inevitably going to wind up - is a tax based on how much you drive. Most countries have annual or bi-annual car inspections, to ensure that vehicles are actually road-worthy. It would be easy to add an odometer check to these inspections, and to send an invoice accordingly. As another comment points out: this tax could also include factors such as vehicle size and weight.
Why fiddle around with interim solutions? Just go to the inevitable end result...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07, @01:28PM (1 child)
We already pay enough taxes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nuke on Thursday December 08, @09:26AM
If you drive a lower mileage than average you should end up paying less towards the infrastructure. I don't drive a high mileage, so why should I subsidise a sales rep using roads 30,000 miles a year, or a truck clocking up 80,000?
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Thursday December 08, @09:20AM
The odometer reading is already recorded in the report, of course.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday December 07, @11:11AM (6 children)
In the US there is a, iirc, 18.4 cent federal gas tax. In Tennessee (my state) there is also a 27.4 cent gas tax. Of the Federal gas tax, we get back about 78 cents on each dollar. Of the State gas tax, we keep all of it. 37% goes to the county where the tax is collected, 3% goes to the state general fund, and 60% goes to TDOT. The state gas tax adds up to about a billion dollars a year, and forms about a third of TDOT's annual budget.
Gas taxes, quite literally, pay for our roads and I agree it's reasonable to ask EV drivers to pay something toward that. I'm also comfortable with the cognitive dissonance that, as a future EV owner, I'll definitely gripe about it. :)
So is $300 reasonable? IDK, let's math it. Bing says the average driver clocks in 14,300 miles per year and gets 25.4 mpg. That's 563 gallons per year. The gas taxes are 18.4+27.4 = 45.8 cents per gallon. Multiply that by 563 gallons per year and it comes to $257.85.
It sounds like EV owners would be paying about 15% more than an average driver with average MPG. As a person that doesn't drive a lot of miles (since COVID) I'd be paying quite a bit more on a per-mile basis. That said, I'm strongly opposed to mileage-based taxes, so I wouldn't complain too much about that.
If you're wondering, Gas prices were between $2.70 and $3.00 locally yesterday. Getting your license plate and registration renewed annually is between $40 and $120 depending on what county you live in, and we don't have personal property tax on vehicles. We do have sales tax here, including on vehicles, but no state income tax.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday December 07, @05:56PM (5 children)
Don't forget that gas cars pay registration fees too - it sounds like EV's will pay $300, NOT $300 *more* than gas cars. If gas cars pay $42.15 the EV owner breaks even.
Out of curiosity, why do you oppose mileage-based taxes? Gas taxes more-or-less translate to an existing mileage tax unless you have an unusually (in)efficient vehicle. Why should someone like myself who lives near work and typically drives less than 1000 miles per year pay as much for road maintenance as the person that drives that much every week?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday December 07, @06:33PM (2 children)
On the fee, you might be right. I don't know.
My objection to mileage-based fees is on what the implementation requires. We don't require vehicle inspections here, so mileage-based taxes would require some new mechanism put in place to gather that data. They certainly aren't going to trust us to self-report it.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday December 08, @02:22PM (1 child)
Okay, yeah, I can see how that would be an added nuisance - but it'd be a nuisance that pays well if you drive substantially less than most.
We don't have a mechanical/emissions inspection here, but the DMV does want to verify the VIN and odometer when you register the first time, adds an extra couple minutes to the DMV visit, but would mean you'd have to visit every time instead of renewing by mail.
That could easily be streamlined dramatically to a drive-through process that only takes a few minutes total... IF they wanted to. Given normal DMV behavior though that'd probably take a mass outcry. The biggest improvement in DMV performance I've seen in my lifetime, by far, was when they started requiring appointments during the pandemic - we're all hoping they continue that indefinitely. Wait times are WAY down, and supposedly throughput is up - and with electronic monitoring in place (which improved things a bit) the benefits should be blindingly obvious to the overseers.
Of course an inspection booth wouldn't actually need to be strongly associated with the DMV - they just need to verify VIN and odometer and stamp your mail-in renewal form as verified by an authorized inspector.
Another option would be to only require that inspection every few years, trusting self-reporting or your past averages, with the difference made up when you do get inspected.
Of course any such mileage inspection adds complexity at the end of your ownership/residency. Getting a final inspection before selling or moving out of state isn't usually *that* big a deal, but especially at the low end of the market a new car purchase is often because the old one died. And totaling crashes have a similar issue - though there you're going to get a police report anyway, so it shouldn't be too much trouble to require them to note the odometer reading on the official report.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday December 08, @08:10PM
Those are reasonable options.
My aversion to this comes from my experience with VA state inspections and TN's emissions inspections. For the former, I had a car I couldn't legally drive because of a crack in the windshield not anywhere near the driver's field of view. For the latter, emissions testing, it was limited to a handful of counties here but was a hassle. $8 cash only for most of my adult life with no card options. They upped it to $20 and started taking cards in the mid twentyteens. The testing centers were run by a contractor, chronically understaffed, and usually had lines that took over an hour to get through. It was a dog's breakfast. Add to that my experience with a car failing the emissions test because the fuel level sensor didn't work. (How in green beans does my gas gauge have to do with maintaining the proper air-fuel mixture to manage what's coming out of the tailpipe?!) Anyway, I'm not a fan at all. We just got rid of emissions testing in my county, and I'm very happy to have it out of my life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08, @04:36AM (1 child)
> Why should someone like myself who lives near work and typically drives less than 1000 miles per year pay as much for road maintenance as the person that drives that much every week?
A typical shortsighted, "f u, I've got mine" argument?
1. Go back to the very first post--heavily loaded trucks do the majority of road damage.
2. Nearly everyone in USA relies on truck transport to get food to your local market, and most of the other things you buy are also delivered by trucks. Indirectly, nearly all of us rely on trucks.
Put these two facts together and it seems obvious that the costs of road maintenance should be spread across everyone. If we make the additional assumption that higher earners are also higher spenders (and thus buy more goods delivered by truck), then adding highway maintenance into income tax seems like a reasonably fair levy, imho.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday December 08, @01:49PM
No, just a "let the costs be mostly paid by those who get the most benefit" argument.
The obvious option would be to make trucks pay almost all the road maintenance fees, then those costs will get passed on so that we all pay them in proportion to the amount of imported goods we purchase. That also gives the added benefit of allowing local goods to be a bit more competitive. And yes, making higher spenders tend to pay a larger share.
Except that as others pointed out the vast majority of roads are residential, and very rarely see anything larger than a UPS delivery van, so perhaps something like a (large flat-rate) plus (low mileage rate) * (mileage) * (average weight)^4 would be the most accurate.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anotherblackhat on Wednesday December 07, @05:24PM
So instead of one unfair tax, they're suggesting two?
If the current tax on gasoline is unfair, then repeal it.
Make it all part of the same bill — repeal the gas tax, and increase the tax on all vehicles that use roads.
They could even adjust the tax based on the weight of the vehicle, or the miles driven.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07, @07:06PM
As a bicyclist, I only pay the $9 saving myself a whole $1 in transport costs compared to motorists. Suck it drivers!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08, @12:54AM
That's literally how it doesn't work. Fuel taxes go to general revenue, and couldn't cover one quarter the cost of road construction and upkeep.
(Score: 1) by meiao on Friday January 06, @03:30PM
Let's not forget that pedestrians also benefit from the car infrastructure.
So we should tax every form of foot wear.
And bikes, let's not forget bikes...