Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryathal | Hacker News Reader

Removing incentives for EVs has to happen eventually, especially if ICE cars get banned. Something has to replace that loss in revenue.

View on HN

Eventually, sure. But 11 years ahead of the supposed ICE ban? When EV sales already aren't growing with those incentives in place? All this will accomplish is ensuring the ICE ban never happens.

Also, this is more than "removing incentives" -- it's an outright EV penalty. The increase in registration fee for EVs is roughly double what the most popular ICE car (Honda CRV) pays in annual gas taxes in the state, according to Gothamist/NPR https://gothamist.com/news/what-drivers-need-to-know-as-nj-m...

The incentives are to encourage adoption, if that happened, they should go away. As for the increased registration it needs to both offset the gas taxes and account for increased road damage.

Yes, ostensibly the extra registration fee is supposed to go to improving the roads. But in NJ, ICE pickup trucks outnumber EVs, and they weigh more than EVs, causing more road damage than EVs. So why don't they have an even larger increased registration fee?

One of the sponsors of the bill (that increased the EV registration fee in order to fund roads) is a state senator who is also the COO of a major roadwork construction company.

He's also simultaneously the mayor of a 10,000 population town with only a couple public chargers. Way more trucks than EVs in his town btw.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com