One would think that the savings in pollution (not only for the car itself, but the transport of the fuel, pollution from refineries, etc.) would offset any lost revenue from gas taxes.
What makes this really nonsensical is that many states still have electric vehicle rebates. They give you a rebate of a few thousand dollars to reward you for buying an electric vehicle but then charge you a few hundred dollars to punish you for buying an electric vehicle.
There are already taxes on tires, but they seem pretty nominal. I think you could hike them substantially (eg to $10 or $20 per tire) without upsetting too many people if you scrapped or reduced some other fee or abolished the necessity for a piece of paperwork.
Edit: as some pointe dout the real wear comes from trucks an dother big commercial vehicles. Tires are already taxed by vehicle weight class, but I'm proposing increasing the fees for that in order to simplify bureaucracy elsewhere.
They could be designed to last however many miles the state likes by putting more or less tread on them. And have a very obvious marker they are worn out so police can easily give tickets for people driving on worn out tyres.
Last time someone on HN discussed the Australia law I asked if Australia had a car ownership tax. It seems that they do, but that the money isn't enough to support road maintenance. Seems the easy answer to the new Australia law would be to increase the car ownership tax, lower the gasoline tax to match the increase, and then you don't need a special law for electric cars. No need to reinvent the wheel.
It’s the common erroneous argument of angry drivers against cyclists: get off my road, you’re not paying for it.
As a side note about angry drivers, I actively try to avoid being angry with cyclists. They have to be outside in the rain and cold, while inside the car it's pretty nice. I can wait.
Thank you!
I like the idea of taxing tyres, as it explicitly taxes mileage and pollution. Would it create weird incentives? People running on tyres too long to avoid the tax? Reusing old, more polluting tyres?
Maybe we should just tax on mileage. In fact why not at the pump/charging station...
It's CERTAINLY a lot less than you'd be paying in gas tax if you used your car an average amount.
Taxes aren't punishment, anyway. Especially "road use taxes", which are, in this case, used to repair the roads you're driving on.
I don't think taxes should be too low and don't mind paying moderate amounts of tax, but I do think the number of taxes should be as low as possible to maintain legitimacy in the population. Nobody likes to feel nickel and dimed to death, so it's better to have a small number of predictable and easy to understand taxes than an endless variety of fees that add up to what feels disproportionately burdensome for the public. Policymakers need to remember that very few of the public are economic rationalists with pocket calculator brains.
So...when you go to a restaurant and eat, paying feels like a punishment?
When you go to an amusement park, paying the entry fee feels like a punishment?
When you pay for a plane ticket...a new appliance...a movie...?
No, the only reason that "taxes are a punishment (or theft)" is a meme _at all_ is that there are a bunch of entitled, privileged, well-off folks who have decided that they have theirs and they don't want to spend anything that will improve or support society.
I've gone through these arguments a few times, and ... yeah, the naivete on the other side is profound. You're right that I won't "win" an argument with someone who espouses that, or at least I won't convince them of anything, but that's due to them ignoring reality.
In this particular case? A usage fee, for cars, that supports roads, for cars? Seems pretty damned natural-consequences to me. You're paying to use something, not "being punished" in any way.
The question of who it is a subsidy to is important, but it is better to directly give them a subsidy than to skew the upstream market towards vehicles that damage roads and cost a ton of money to repair.
I doubt we'll get there though, I admit that we can't get anything effective done. And we'd need to effectively keep prices from rising at the register to even the playing field for infrastructure expenses.
Found it: https://www.gao.gov/products/109954
A couple of caveats: it's from 1979 and deals with interstates only.
We don’t need people in cars.
While some people might enjoy some of the useless consumerism crap that's moved from China to your closest shopping center via trucks, I enjoy driving my old petrol car through the landscape and to the track.
Now let's all step back, calm down and compromise. :)
Whether roads are funded by road taxes or primary school fees doesn't matter - if we want to promote a behaviour we subsidize it; if we want to discourage it, we tax it.
Whether and how the books balance in the background isn't relevant.
Income taxes are the major part of the income that society needs to function. The rest of the lot are just punitive ones, like estate and wealth taxes.
It does, in social impact sense (gas taxes in the US are universally way too low to cover the impacts).
OTOH, diffuse social benefit doesn't pay for road maintenance, and states have legal and practical requirements for short-run operating budget balance. The right solution would probably be increase general taxation, in a way that misses the low end (e.g., bump income taxes, but not the lowest brackets), to cover the costs.
Most of the wear and tear on our roads come from trucks, not passenger cars.
A tesla model s weighs about as much as a ford f-150.
I have a Tesla in CA and am only familiar with the electric vehicle credit (not sure what it is, I haven't looked into it) and the "you get to use carpool lanes" rule for EVs.
Otherwise, I'm not familiar with extra taxes :(
But I think they do charge extra to make up for the fact that you never have to smog an electric vehicle.
https://electrek.co/2020/07/10/california-starts-charging-ev...
Are they really idiots if that's the reality of the situation? It's gonna be a long time before EVs are in the beater car price brackets.
As I've already noted, the complaint is common across the political spectrum. From the Left, it's usually couched as a minority / inequality argument that such policies disadvantage poor minorities. From the right, it's more usually aimed at latte-sipping, college-educated, elitist liberals.
Whilst there's some truth to both portrayals, the underlying reality is that the common weal is served by developing (and trialing) alternative technologies and solutions, and building out necessary infrastructures. If there are inequities that arise out of them, then other taxation and spending parameters can be adjusted to achieve a net-neutral economic impact, or to offer / promote conservation and efficiency options which are better suited to minorities and/or the white / rural poor.
Note that the whole divide-and-conquer tactic is also very often supported at least in part by the interests directly harmed by such initiatives: traditional fossil-fuel powered automobiles, coal producers, and the like. Look beyond the engagement at the front to see what the generals are scheming and whom they're manipulating to their own advantage.
There are many layers to this. Rich people, people who own houses, have a better time with electric cars than poor people who rent apartments. Poor people also cannot afford to replace a car every decade. They shy away from tech such as batteries that have life expectancies less than a decade. Certainly few second or third-hand buyers want to purchase a battery pack with only a few years left in it. So the separation between gas an electrics isn't all about sticker price, but it is about money.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/16/wrong-tu...
[1]: https://theconversation.com/australias-car-industry-ignored-...
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/09/scott...
For example, recently there's been quite high electricity prices here (as in most of Europe) due to lack of rain. However this only affected the southern half of Norway[1], as the northern part had a fair bit of rain but limited distribution lines to the south.
There's been quite a bit of talk in the news about how much we need to spend to upgrade our grid for the future. It's not gonna be cheap...
[1] https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/Market-data1/Dayahead/Area-Pri... (compare Oslo with Tromsø for late September)
https://www.statnett.no/for-aktorer-i-kraftbransjen/tall-og-...
In addition to generation there is local distribution. Power lines, transformers, etc. Is there any information on that part of it? I wonder if they needed to upgrade their grid.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1025497/distribution-of-...
93 percent hydro, 4 percent wind, 2.5 percent thermal.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Norway
I bought a used sub-$20k electrical car a few months ago; it can be done. The market needs pressure to create cars in that price range; right now EVs are mostly luxury cars. Tesla is not the car we should be aiming for; what we need are things in the class of the E-Golf, Kia Niro, FFE, Fiat 500E etc. that are the size of a Corolla and cost 20k CAD or less.
Until that's common on the market, the value proposition is flawed and nobody is buying an electric car to save money except for people who buy used cars that someone else has eaten the depreciation on (like me), or people who drive a LOT. Everyone else is basically buying these things as luxury items, and the cost doesn't matter, especially when you can get near-0% financing over 5+ years.....
As it is the EV subsidies are really just helping homeowners buy luxury cars which seems a little backwards
The goal was to drive scale so that the price would drop, this has been successful. In the US the federal subsidy phases out after 500K. Tesla and GM have both passed that and have models that are less than the US average for a new car of $40K.
Many non-tree hugger analysts project that upfront EV costs will be equal to ICE by the middle of the decade.
Out of curiosity, what make and model? I'm trying to find an EV and like everyone is saying, it's all luxury vehicles.
This is why I think it was a mistake not to use plugin hybrids as a stepping stone to full EV's. They might be marginally more complex but you could make five times as many cars with the same battery capacity.
Currently C8s are appreciating their first year, which is really weird.
The Model S is really chonky at almost 5000 lbs, which is the same as a 4Runner.
Why is that weird? That seems typical for new, extremely popular cars where supply isn’t meeting demand. It happened years ago with the PT Cruiser, and when Mini (re-)entered the US market. It’s happened with Teslas too. Right now it’s happening with the C8 Corvette and Ford Bronco, which are both really tough to find on dealer lots. In 5 or 10 years, they’ll have depreciated like more typical used cars. The tough part is guessing when supply will become sufficient (and values will drop).
Yeah, not sure about that. Currently, used Model 3 LR AWD from 2019 with around 10k-20k mileage go for just a few grand cheaper than what I bought it for (new) in 2019[0].
0. https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/l-Used-2019-Tesla-Model-3-Long...
I used the historical data for the Model S. Will definitely check out the 3.
Maybe compare the Model S to an M5 or E63?
“I believe the best social program is a job.” — Ronald Reagan
It's bigger picture thinking, warmer summers, snowier winters, and turning major metropolitan areas back in coral reefs. Sadly, SF is too hilly for most of it to drown. Freedom is a full tank.
If this is a business-side incentive versus a consumer-side incentive, I personally would much rather they just give them the money directly based on sales and avoid the dishonesty of making folk feel like, even after "savings", EVs are expensive.
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/programs/consult...
One could argue that the government would not be able to offer subsidies on EVs without that option.
0: https://www.norges-bank.no/en/topics/liquidity-and-markets/F...
You're talking about a tax difference, not a price difference. We have the same taxes here in Denmark and our EV sales aren't anywhere near Norway's level. Probably because the actual prices end up being roughly equal, but the EV usually has lower range and takes longer to fill up compared to the equally-priced gasoline car.
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/norway-gm-electric-cars-mo...
Not just the numbers, but also the geography and climate. Make a car that can be used for a long trip any time of the year here, and you're set for most markets.
There's a reason why car makers come to Norway and Sweden to test their new cars before launch.