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Comment by aggie | Hacker News Reader

Road maintenance is funded primarily through taxation of gas and diesel [1]. As electric vehicles don't use either, they do not pay a proportional share of the cost to maintain roads. The fuel tax has been an elegant funding solution because it scales both with mileage and vehicle weight (as heavier vehicles use more fuel).

Further, electric vehicles weigh more than comparable gas or diesel vehicles, making the ratio of road wear to tax contribution even more disparate.

Even if you agree electric vehicles are good for society overall, we will need to find a new way to fund road maintenance.

[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X16...

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The same way we fund it currently- by allocating money from the budget. While it may feel good to talk about "this tax pays for this program" it is not a law of nature that a decrease in a specific tax will lead to a corresponding decrease in funding for any particular program. On the contrary, it is commonly expected that an overrun in a particular tax will be spent elsewhere.

When the day comes that the revenue from the fuel tax has dipped low enough that the money needs to be replaced, I am quite sure we can come up with 300 other ways to allocate the tax burden appropriately.

Some things are more easily measured than others, e.g. how much fuel has been used vs how much street lighting has been used. Some public spending is more aligned with usage than others, e.g. road wear aligns well with distance traveled vs water piping wear does not align with use. It is a very nice situation when spending depends on usage which is easily measured - tax burden can be concentrated on actual users and not distributed to wide population.

This is the point of the debate. Prior to electric vehicles, we have been more or less in a situation where we could concentrate tax burden of road maintenance on vehicle users/owners. Electric vehicle use is much harder to measure apart from coarse odometer readings taken during inspection.

Ditch the fuel tax, and instead have an annual registration tax based on distance travelled and vehicle weight? Could also incorporate lesser factors like efficiency, and likely to be a subsidy for heavy vehicles. Of course the beauty of fuel tax that it incorporates all of those factors already, and you get easy, regular collection.

As to the sister comment on how do we pay for the extra electricity infrastructure... through your electricity bill?

> have an annual registration tax based on distance travelled

Now the hard part is getting accurate distance traveled figures from all road users. Good luck with that.

> As to the sister comment on how do we pay for the extra electricity infrastructure... through your electricity bill?

Yes, and the system is breaking down because of solar. Typically, most of what you pay for electricity goes towards maintaining the line to your house, not towards generation. When you get solar panels that cover most of your usage, but keep the connection for use when the sun does not shine, your bill goes down to the point where it's no longer enough to maintain your grid connection.

The correct solution to that is to disaggregate transmission and generation, and for transmission bill you for the size of your main incoming fuse instead of consumption. However, in much of the US the utilities are heavily constrained in how they bill you by law, and cannot do this, so the only thing they can do is hike up prices on everyone, so solar is even more appealing and more people get it, resulting in even higher prices...

In the UK (and many other countries) each vehicle has a mandatory yearly inspection.

The MOT test in the UK checks emissions, roadworthiness, basic functionality. No reason why it couldn't also report mileage.

Most modern cars provide an API so you can track mileage. Again, not hard to provide that as a taxable figure.

"The MOT test in the UK checks emissions"

Unfortunately the UK does not have proper emissions checks as part of the MOT.

There is a (subjective) visual check for visible smoke, and a metered exhaust check which again only tests generically for "smoke", ie large particulates.

Unfortunately there is no testing of specific pollutants (NOx, PM2.5, PM10, etc) so many vehicles can pass MOT even if they are way outside allowed emissions levels, have had DPF removed, etc.

We get accurate numbers for income tax, why not for road tax?

Because installing a tracker on someone’s car will end with lots of privacy issues? You need a tracker to properly attribute taxes to the person that owns the road, and even though you don’t need super accurate trackers, any tracking can be abused.

You don't need trackers if you just want to replicate the mechanism of the fuel tax for cars that don't use fuel. For that you only need a tamper-protected mileage counter.

You don't need an electronic tracker to implement distance-based road charges. New Zealand has been doing this for decades:

https://www.nzta.govt.nz/vehicles/licensing-rego/road-user-c...

You mean, the mileage counter on my car is a privacy issue?

Just read of the mileage counter, end of story.

I disagree on ditching the current fuel tax for combustion engines. What about keeping the current system for combustion engines and creating the "distance traveled tax" only for electric vehicles. Although the separate systems would be a bit confusing for hybrids.

Only took me a few seconds to figure out how to abuse the distance traveled tax for combustion engines. Physically roll back the odometer if the vehicle is old enough, do it electronically, disconnect the odometer, and/or other ways. I think people that travel around the country a lot would abuse. FYI, messing with the odometer is a felony so don't do it.

My state does not have yearly inspections, so nobody is going to read my odometer.

> Even if you agree electric vehicles are good for society overall, we will need to find a new way to fund road maintenance.

The simple answer is a mileage tax on registration of vehicles, thoufh California’s EV fee coming in 2020 is simpler if not as well scaled to impact.

Only took me a few seconds to figure out how to abuse the mileage tax for combustion engines. Physically roll back the odometer if the vehicle is old enough, do it electronically, disconnect the odometer, and/or other ways. I think people that travel around the country a lot would abuse. FYI, messing with the odometer is a felony so don't do it.

My state does not have yearly inspections, so nobody is going to read my odometer.

Anyway someone will need to pay for the electric infrastructure, all these megawatt-scale charging stations, power lines to supply them and 2-3 times more power plants than we need now. But hopefully reality check will come before that

Petrol/Diesel destroys the environment. Maintaining the road is the govt's duty. Let them figure it out :)

There are some +ve and some -ve points about each technology and I'd rather have the govt build roads every year or research on building better roads if that is what it takes to get every vehicle to be electric.

With "smart" meters, they will be able to tax more for electricity used to charge cars...

California will start charging a $100 fee to EVs at registration each year for this.

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