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Comment by dcchambers | Hacker News Reader

I know that this sounds unfair/bad - but it brings up something I never thought about with EVs. With many states a huge portion of the taxes that support the road infrastucture comes from the gas taxes. With EVs not filling up at the pump - how can states ensure they pay their share to keep the roads maintained?

Gas taxes are nice because they ensure that even people travelling into your state help pay for the roads they are using. If you just charge higher tax at registration you can't capture any of that revenue.

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Most road damage due to vehicles is actually caused by heavy commercial trucks etc. Taxing vehicles by total impact on roads makes more sense to me, as the price will effectively be passed onto consumers who buy products transported by truck. It might help incentivise development of more local rail lines which we need to be doing in the US anyway.

And penalize people who don't actually need big stupid trucks.

I assume you are talking about silly oversized pickups ala brodozers and the like. The gp is talking about commercial vehicles which do actual work and are part of infrastructure.

Those taxes don't just pay for repairing damaged roads. It also pays to build and maintain streets and pedestrian ways where it wouldn't ordinarily be economic to do so -- like paving the street to your house or paving your alleyway and keeping it in good repair.

That being said, the 'make up' taxes being proposed for EVs in general far outstrip the taxes that would be collected on the fuel had the cars consumed it, even if they had consumed it at the rates of far less fuel efficient cars. I think we can probably agree on that point.

Gas taxes are already not-that-high of a fraction of what funds the roads anyway: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/05/debunking-the...

That doesn't mean politicians won't pretend like every piece of infrastructure is funded purely though state gas taxes in an effort to create additional revenue streams and justify increasing registration fees and whatnot.

Personally I'm fine with not imposing extra taxes on EVs. They're a negligible portion of road traffic right now and since they aren't heavy trucks they account for basically none of the infrastructure wear and tear.

Surely this is where carbon taxes come in. Or a yearly fee or road tax on all vehicles, perhaps graduated by axle weight.

A fee purely on EVs, when it's far in excess of what a typical driver will pay in fuel taxes, is nothing more or less than a fossil fuel subsidy. It's going to discourage EV take up, and prolong ICE usage. The excess payments should be coming from the petrol and diesel burning vehicles, to discourage their use.

I can't speak to other states, but in PA, part of the logging is what miles you've driven through the state. This prevents drivers from stopping and filling up on the border at a cheaper state and have enough diesel to drive through without buying more in our state. So the road tax is already based on mileage not just fuel. It is just partially charged at fuel purchase time.

The main problem with EVs is that it would be easy to back charge you based on mileage but getting that $600 bill all at one time would be a hardship for some people. PA has an annual registration fee that also hits seniors quite hard as they drive almost no miles but at least they don't pay much in tax at the pump.

fyi, PA is a great case study as we have more miles of road than any other state and the majority of shipping to/from the northeast goes through the keystone state. I think we'll have to be more innovative and split these into a monthly payment based on expected miles and you pay the balance at annual inspection/registration time. Then we can charge based on weight and mileage to get a more fair picture of use. [Source: my sister is a high level director at PennDOT.]

Weight * Mileage. Done.

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