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An Anonymous Coward writes in with an article from Vice.com.
A generous state tax break has helped make Georgia the number two state for electric vehicles, and made Atlanta the top market for the compact Nissan Leaf. Both the Leaf and the higher-end Tesla sedans are now common sights in and around metro Atlanta, where more than 10,500 are registered.
But this year, Georgia lawmakers needed to raise nearly $1 billion to patch up crumbling roads, highways, and bridges. So they are pulling the plug on that $5,000 tax credit — a move budget analysts say will contribute $66 million to the state's coffers in 2016 and nearly $190 million by 2020.
But it gets worse for electric vehicle (EV) boosters. Legislators are adding a $200-a-year annual fee for owners to offset the loss of gasoline taxes that drivers would otherwise pay to maintain roads.
The Economist has a breakdown of the current system of the tax credits and the expected economic impact of the changes.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Snotnose on Saturday April 04 2015, @02:45PM
Getting rid of the tax credit, good. Why is the state giving $5k to upper middle class people?
Charging $200 for buying electric is pure BS.
Trump's Grave will be the world's most popular open air toilet.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by CirclesInSand on Saturday April 04 2015, @03:05PM
Why is the state giving $5k to upper middle class people?
This is sarcasm right? Do you really think that welfare is for poor people? The richer you are, the more money you get from the government. That's pretty much a universal fact of all of human history.
I completely agree with your outrage though. In this case, they get away with it by pretending that it is for the sake of environmental health.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 04 2015, @03:58PM
If only life were actually as black and white as that.
There is nothing stopping it from being about both those things simultaneously, as well as a whole host of other factors too.
(Score: 2) by subs on Saturday April 04 2015, @08:52PM
Charging $200 for buying electric is pure BS.
How else are we going to pay for the infrastructure bought by gas tax dollars and used equally by ICE cars and EVs? Do you consider it fair to use a service and not pay for it?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lentilla on Sunday April 05 2015, @12:04AM
I can't help but point out (and I'm surprised nobody seems to have mentioned it already on this thread) that damage to roads is proportional to the fourth power of the axle weight [wikipedia.org]. Without wanting to unduly labour this point (since we've already been through this in other discussions), it's worth recognising that as soon as you allow trucks on your road, the damage done by cars fades in significance.
Do you consider it fair to use a service and not pay for it?
No, but I'd consider it reasonable to share infrastructure. "Infrastructure" being something that needs to exist anyway: roads are a good example, as is sewerage, public transportation systems and so on. I am content to balance out the cost across society - the times that I can contribute are balanced out by the times that I contribute less. I am content that these costs balance out for two reasons:
(Score: 2) by subs on Sunday April 05 2015, @02:13AM
I can't help but point out (and I'm surprised nobody seems to have mentioned it already on this thread) that damage to roads is proportional to the fourth power of the axle weight. Without wanting to unduly labour this point (since we've already been through this in other discussions), it's worth recognising that as soon as you allow trucks on your road, the damage done by cars fades in significance.
Watch out what you're asking for. EVs tend to be a lot heavier (easily 50%) than ICE cars. Are you prepared to pay 5x more than your ICE neighbor for infrastructure because of your EV with all of its heavy batteries? You gotta compare apples to apples. Trucks are already taxed more, so the point is moot. Stop deflecting.
No, but I'd consider it reasonable to share infrastructure.
I take it then that you have no objection to that $200/year tax on EVs, as it's merely bringing them roughly in-line with existing road infrastructure-using vehicles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 05 2015, @04:39AM
> Are you prepared to pay 5x more than your ICE neighbor for infrastructure because of your EV with all of its heavy batteries?
Why do you assume hypocrisy on his part?
> Trucks are already taxed more, so the point is moot. Stop deflecting.
Yeah? Define "more." Because that sounds like deflection to me. There is no way they are taxed proportionally to the 4th power of axle weight.
(Score: 3, Touché) by lentilla on Sunday April 05 2015, @08:39AM
You know how I mentioned previously that attempting to calculate a "fair share" was a fool's errand?
No, but I'd consider it reasonable to share infrastructure.
I take it then that you have no objection to that $200/year tax on EVs
When I was talking about "sharing", I didn't mean "share a cake by paying for the proportion you eat". Like I tried to explain before: calculating the proportion will generate so many wildly dissenting opinions. What I am suggesting is that we consider infrastructure as something that benefits us all - rich and poor alike. In the case of road infrastructure, the rich benefit by selling products delivered via road and the poor benefit by being able to visit shops to buy products. We all benefit. Who benefits more? Less?
Are you prepared to pay 5x more than your ICE neighbor for infrastructure because of your EV with all of its heavy batteries?
Am I prepared to? Yes. Would I do so? That would honestly depend on price. Personally I am content to pay more to drive the car that I want. How much more is a very individual question. In my case, probably quite a bit more, but then again I rather like cars - I see them as a kind of mechanical symphony wrapped up in artistic form. Other people don't quite share my love. So... pragmatically speaking, we need to forget individual preferences because it isn't relevant to the bigger picture. The real question is: what kind of behaviours do we want to encourage?
Burning fossil fuels is not something we want to keep doing. Electric cars might not be the answer - how "green" they are depends on who you ask. I do know one thing; though; and that is that we want to explore all the options available, as much as possible, as fast as possible. Automobile technology has come a long way. The last thing we want to do at this very moment when we are experiencing an evolution of automobile engineering is discourage innovation through a regressive tax. The sooner we wean ourselves from burning fossil fuels to get to work on a daily basis, the better for all humanity. It's a good bet giving emergent technologies a "free pass".
To summarise my position, I put forward the following considerations:
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Sunday April 05 2015, @08:05AM
There's that license plate sticker that contributes to paying for roads... in theory.
Sure, it's not the same as sticker+gas tax. But the EVs don't cause billions in health care costs to the state from spewing their pollution in the middle of the city.
(Score: 2) by Sir Finkus on Saturday April 04 2015, @08:58PM
Charging $200 for buying electric is pure BS.
Why? As I understand it gas taxes are just a convenient way to charge people taxes based upon how much they use the roads. An electric car is going to cause just as much wear and tear on the road as the equivalent gas powered vehicle. The alternative is more tolls or a straight mileage tax.
Taxes and fees suck, but so do bridge collapses and potholes.
Join our Folding@Home team! [stanford.edu]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 04 2015, @10:32PM
It is a pretty shitty proxy for road usage. At least a gas tax has some relationship to the actual amount of wear and tear on the roads.
A straight mileage tax is a lot better. Everybody will pay equally for their road usage whether it is a 12mpg guzzler or an electric car. All the heavily populated counties in georgia already have yearly emissions testing, recording the odometer would not be a burden.
(Score: 5, Informative) by gnuman on Sunday April 05 2015, @01:29AM
Proper road tax should incorporate two things,
1. initial capital costs, based on usage - this comes from property taxes (frontage) as well maybe mileage fees
2. actual road damage, which is 4th power of actual weight per axle.
You see, a cement truck with 40 tons of concrete or a semi with 40 tons created tremendously more damage on the roads than any normal car. For example, a bicycle, ALL the road damage in perpetuity is more than included in the sales tax, if the sales tax is more than 1%. But a cement truck with 10 tons per axle, creates about 10,000 more damage than a normal car. If they are charging $200/yr for road damage, than the semi and cement truck companies need to be charged $200,000+ per year per vehicle per 20k km. Fair is fair, right? But then you have truckers converting to natural gas which completely sidestep the infinitesimal costs they pay in gas costs.
Everyone is subsidizing heavy traffic on the roads.