> Utah views EV drivers as tax evaders because they don't buy gas

That's because they kind of are. Road taxes are often use-based, where gasoline is the way they extract "use" taxes.

EVs also wear roads more than gas cars do, on average, because of their higher rate. And it's not linear wear per pound, either.

This is going to require a significant shift about how states and cities think about their road maintenance budgets and the taxes required to sustain them. A lot of states are going to, predictably, get this wrong.

I figure it’s semi trucks that do almost all the road damage. We could just tax the trucks, but that would just get passed along in higher prices for everything. So might as well pay for road repair out of the general fund than have special taxes.

They do, but it's priced in. Many states have weigh stations as part of enforcing the existing taxation through diesel and licensing.

They also have to go through 3x the registration effort, and do it in every state they drive in.

> and do it in every state they drive in.

Not anymore. You just get an IFTA sticker and apportioned plates.

No, they all just get registered in Maine which supposedly has pretty lax rules on Semis

I travel a lot, and see semis from most states, and commercial pickup haulers from all states. They say NJ, NY, KY, and UT, are especially penurious about additional registration and licensing.

No, externalities should be priced in where practical otherwise the market will be more inefficient, which in this case means the public footing an unnecessarily high road repair bill.

Diesel is already taxed at a higher rate than gasoline.

A diesel truck that has three times the pressure on the road and easily ten to fifteen times the total weight, while getting about 1/3rd the gas mileage of the average US passenger vehicle.

Given the (unsupported) claim that a EV wears the road significantly more than a gasoline car for what amounts to shouldn't we expect that a vehicle exerting three times the pressure on the road should pay more per mile than 'just' 3x what you and I do in our gas passenger cars?

> Given the (unsupported) claim that a EV wears the road significantly more than a gasoline car

Wear on the road is a function of weight. It’s really simple and uncontroversial. An EV generally weighs more than an ICE of equivalent size.

Hopefully, the federal push to install tons of charging stations will usher in useful EVs with smaller batteries, lowering weight.

I still think this is BS, considering trucks are causing 2500 times [0] more damage than gas cars and are certainly not bringing tax income proportionally to this. Why should EV then?

[0] https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...

This seems like a weird argument to make. We either pay collectively more for taxes for the roads we use, or collectively we pay WAY more for food, materials, and basically everything else if we tax trucks proportionally. Large trucks are carrying stuff, and the cost of that stuff is going to be directly associated with the cost of logistics.

Yes, some states haven't figured out what that looks like, but I really don't think the right answer is to dump all that cost on truckers. I would rather pay more for my car's operational tax, increased EV tax or existing gas tax on ICE, than disproportionately affect the price of groceries for someone living paycheck to paycheck.

Doesn’t this assume that the cost will not effect behavior? If trucking logistics becomes more expensive to properly account for the externalities, wouldn’t companies be more motivated to find more cost efficient methods. I’m sure there are plenty of items that could be shipped by rail, but aren’t because trucking is currently cheaper for the individual company, while the cost in road damage, pollution, greenhouse gasses, increased traffic, etc. are paid by everyone else.

As for disproportionately affecting the poor, sales taxes (like on groceries and other goods) and excise taxes (like on gas) are exactly the regressive taxation systems that burden the very people living paycheck to paycheck. Shifting the tax burden from skimming off the top for the people spending all their income on daily necessities, towards companies paying the full cost of their chosen operations, would give the poor more buying power and allow market forces to find and utilize the most effective and efficient means to provide services instead of the cheapest means that are only cheap because they are subsidized by everyone else.

I think you misunderstood my argument. I'm not saying vehicles should be taxed proportionally to road usage, on this I don't have an opinion. I'm saying either you do this for all vehicles or none. You cannot say "EV vehicles pay proportionally but trucks not" without clearly being biased against EV (whatever the reasons).

The increase in damage due to the higher weight is insignificant if semis and other heavy vehicles are allowed on that road.

Also you could just get a slightly smaller cars since EVs tend to be a bit more space efficient.

Semis aren't typically driving down suburbia or in left lanes on highways.

Noting the increased road damage isn't an attack on EVs, it's a call to be smarter about infrastructure:.

> Given the (unsupported) claim that a EV wears the road significantly more than a gasoline car

This is an unambiguously, heavily supported claim. By states, car makers, the federal government, and third party analysis firms. It's incredibly uncontroversial. It's even got a name, and associated math: it's called the Fourth Power Law https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...

> shouldn't we expect that a vehicle exerting three times the pressure on the road should pay more per mile than 'just' 3x what you and I do in our gas passenger cars

Gas taxes make up a relatively small part of the cost of gas. If you run the numbers, you'll find that it's maybe closer to around 3.5-4x for most passenger EVs. At scale, that becomes a problem, but at the individual level, it's still a relatively small amount - and certainly less than the cost of gas.

> This is an unambiguously, heavily supported claim.

Your source claims no such thing. EVs may be heavier than equivalent ICE cars, but an electric Smart (the brand) is going to do less damage than a loaded Ford F150.

Tax the weight, not a shitty proxy for weight.

…and an F150 uses more fuel than a car.

Your comparison is misleading. Compare an ICE car to an EV car, not the lightest EV to the heaviest ICE.

That was exactly their point. You can't use 'EV' to mean heavier vehicle across the board.

> This is an unambiguously, heavily supported claim.

It is pretty much insignificant increase on road wear vs what trucks put on it?

Yes, but HGVs don't go onto residential roads.

If you meant SUVs or pick-ups by trucks yeah, insignificant and a bad proxy for weight anyway. No point in taxing EVs when what you need to tax is weight.

The fourth power law is uncontroversial, the fact that on average (or just take per model) EVs wear more than your "average ICE car" (especially as SUVs are the average now) is not

> Gas taxes make up a relatively small part of the cost of gas

Over in the EU it seems that taxes and duties represent at least half of the cost of petrol, more in some member states

https://www.statista.com/statistics/937796/pump-price-and-ta...

Q: How are governments going to replace this?

> Q: How are governments going to replace this?

Add a supplemental registration tax to EVs and hybrids to make up the cost of consuming less fuel. Of course, taxes never go away, so enjoy this new tax as we enter an electric future.

> Add a supplemental registration tax to EVs and hybrids to make up the cost of consuming less fuel

Q: How much fuel duty and tax does the average ICE vehicle (or rather, its driver) contribute?

I did some back-of-napkin math and came up with a figure of €500

I used to have a Dodge 2500 diesel it weighed 4,000kg. For comparison an EV Tesla Model X is 2,500kg. a non-EV Toyota Camry is 1,500kg.

I still have the dents in my driveway pavement!

"Fuel duty is currently levied at a flat rate of 52.95p per litre for both petrol and diesel, while VAT at 20% is then charged on both the product price and the duty."

https://racfoundation.org/data/percentage-uk-pump-price-whic...

In the US, where Utah is located, diesel is taxed at a higher rate: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Gasoline...

I figured it was implied since we were talking about the US, but context has a way of collapsing in threaded conversations. Thanks for bringing it back around.

You're right about semis. The most cost effective thing for keeping the roads better is weigh stations open all the time.

However, EVs cause around 2x more damage to roads than non EVs.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/26/pothole-electric...

Wait til the semi EVs hit the road!

EVs also have significantly higher particulate emissions due to increased tire wear.

You know you linked to a fictional news site, right?

Terrible source, yes, but it happens to be at least roughly on point in this instance; if my dim recall of the relevant engineering is correct, road damage grows quadratically to the pressure exerted on the road by tires, and EVs are typically nearly twice as heavy as ICE vehicles.

> and EVs are typically nearly twice as heavy as ICE vehicles.

A 3-series BMW clocks in at 1700-2255 kg. A comparable Tesla Model Y clocks in at 1778-2003 kg (from empty to fully loaded).

2255kg is the maximum load, and 1700kg is not at all an ordinary car weight; hatchbacks are often closer to 650 and my sedan is barely over 1000.

You could argue that those aren’t luxury vehicles, but downmarket EVs need to be heavy too, because batteries do not match the energy density of petrol.

Myself, I’m replacing nearly every car trip with biking where feasible (young kids make that challenging, admittedly, but the car doesn’t see a ton of use these days).

I think your figures are off. What hatchback only weighs 600kg? What sedan only weighs 1000kg?

Hrm, digging deeper and you're right, I'm a little light - hatchbacks are closer to 1000 and the commodore sedan starts at 1370.

Kei cars? The Citroën AX was about 700kg.

Those are both massive cars. Under a ton is more typical and reasonable.

Here in Germany, a 3-series BMW is the standard middle class sedan. Certainly less weight than most SUVs.

Under a ton?! Do you mean under 1000 kg? How do you figure?

The Dacia Sandero, one of the smallest cars I can think of here in France, that's also supposed to be cheap so doesn't have a lot of... anything, has a curb weight of 1,025–1,204 kg (2,260–2,654 lb) according to wikipedia [0].

The previous generation Renault Clio, which is a small city car, weighed around 1000 kg, too (980 at the lowest). [1]. Wikipedia doesn't have data for the current generation, which is somewhat bigger physically.

---

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacia_Sandero

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Clio#Fourth_generation...

Our country’s Sandero is actually a bit big for the B segment. The Polo, Corsa and Fiesta are all a bit smaller and lighter, at least the previous generation. You’re right about the current generation, though. Not that many on the streets, but they generally are a bit over a ton.

At least the popular A segment cars like the Aygo, Up or 500 still tend to be under a ton.

Sadly even heavier cars are becoming more popular, so in the future a ton will be far from the median.

>A 3-series BMW clocks in at 1700-2255 kg. A comparable Tesla Model Y clocks in at 1778-2003 kg (from empty to fully loaded).

A brand new 330i is 3500lbs. A Model Y is 4500lbs. That's a 28% increase in weight for a similar size car.

A Honda Civic is 3100lbs in full trim. A 530i is 3800lbs. My VW SUV is only 3850lbs.

That means more tire wear and more road wear. Are we at the point where EV fans are going to deny that EVs are far heavier?

> A brand new 330i is 3500lbs. A Model Y is 4500lbs. That's a 28% increase in weight for a similar size car.

GP said "and EVs are typically nearly twice as heavy as ICE vehicles"

Also I'm sure you know that 330i is a sedan. Model Y is a SUV. They are not similar. A BMW similar to Model Y would be X3. it's weight is 4150lbs.

Did you know that BMW series 7 is around 4720lbs, compared to 4790lbs of a model S?

EV is heavier than ICE. That's never been a question. EV is gentler to the environment despite the weight.

They are clearly heavier which causes more wear and tear. The estimation that they are nearly twice as heavy is inaccurate. Do you agree with these statements?

Believe it or not, it's proportional to the fourth power (!) of the axle load: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

Yeah, that doesn't work, though. It makes no sense mathematically and can be shown by a simple experiment to break down in practice.

Is “nah I don’t think so” really a powerful counterargument to a page with a list of academic and government citations offering support of its claims?

Well, it's very very simple.

Does a sharp pointy thing poke a hole in a surface more easily or less easily than a big flat thing?

The "list of academic and government citations" is all just finger-in-the-air unscientific "we think it works like this because it fits our primary school child view of the world".

EVs are not double the weight of comparable ICE vehicles. Yes, they are heavier -- but not 100% heavier.

Tax the semi trucks and it makes it more economical to use rail freight.

Hiding the externalities is somewhat communist.

IMO gas and diesel vehicles should pay a higher tax for all the air pollution they create that the public has to clean up or deal with (in terms of adverse health effects, health care, etc).

> Road taxes are often use-based, where gasoline is the way they extract "use" taxes.

26% of road funds come from gas taxes; 11 percent from tolls, another 25% from the federal government: https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...

Now, about those "paying their fair share of 25% of the cost of the roads" gas taxes: In Utah, the gas tax was $0.245 in 1997. Today it's $0.34, when adjusting for inflation alone it should be $0.46, so drivers have received what amounts to a 25% tax reduction in the last ~30 years. The federal gas tax hasn't been raised in thirty years. So there's another tax break drivers have gotten.

That's just inflation. Average fuel economy has risen from 18mpg to over 22, which means per mile drivers are paying on average 20% less of "their fair share" due to mileage increases alone.

So it's a bit weird that suddenly people in gas cars are getting high and mighty about EV owners "not paying their fair share."

> EVs also wear roads more than gas cars do, on average, because of their higher rate. And it's not linear wear per pound, either.

The Ford F150, which is the most popular "car" sold in America, is between 4,069 and 5,697 pounds.

A Tesla Model 3 is 3,862 to 4,048 lbs. A Chevy Bolt is ~3600lb.

Yet..who gets taxed more by Utah? Does Utah give people with small 3000lb gas cars a tax break, and penalize 5,000lb pickup truck owners?

Also, where were all these concerns about increased road wear on budgets when American purchasing trends tilted toward larger and heavier SUVs and pickups? Average vehicle weight has risen 10%+ since 1990.

EVs start to get popular and suddenly now everyone's very concerned about...road wear?

Bish, please.

Utah didn't want to raise the gas tax (it's a political third rail) so they relied on their extremely stupid electorate to buy up the myth that drivers in gas cars are "paying their fair share" and instituted a punitive tax on EVs which Dumb Yokel Bob fully supports because it's sticking it to those "libruhls in them fuckin' priuses an shit", believing everything he hears on conservative radio about EVs (for example, that they 'cost' more CO2 to make than a regular car. Which is true....until around 14,000 miles into ownership when the EV breaks even compared to a gas car.)

>> Does Utah give people with small 3000lb gas cars a tax break, and penalize 5,000lb pickup truck owners?

Yes, if your car has less weight you use less gas and therefore have a “tax break” compared to the guy on the 5,000lb truck.

>> EVs start to get popular and suddenly now everyone's very concerned about...road wear?

Would it be better to ignore the problem?

Yes, in the near term it absolutely would because we need to decarbonize transport. Or put another way, fuel taxes are an impromptu way of taxing the huge externalities of ICE vehicles in terms of carbon emissions and exhaust, and unless those taxes are increased, adding special EV-only fees and taxes (which many states already have at much higher rates than the state fuel tax) will actually do the opposite, effectively negating this taxation of externalities that already exists.

> Would it be better to ignore the problem?

Would it be better to focus on the larger problem, rather than distract with a symbolic but ultimately meaningless and punitive "solution"? Yes, it would be better to ignore it for now and focus on adjusting the gas tax to properly reflect how fuel efficiency increases allow for less and less gas to be bought for heavier and heavier weight. To skip over everything noted in the OP comment that hasn't been done to have ICE drivers "pay their fair share" only to then to focus on the tiny minority of EV drivers rings pretty hollow.

>if your car has less weight you use less gas and therefore have a “tax break” compared to the guy on the 5,000lb truck.

What if you have an older and less fuel efficient car? Why should new car buyers get a tax break vs older car owners when it is vehicle weight that is doing the road damage? Would it be better to ignore the problem?

California has the nations highest gas taxes yet worst roads...

https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/state-tax/603259/states-with...

https://ktla.com/news/california/these-states-have-the-rough...

This is why I advocate for a gross vehicle weight rating and vehicle miles traveled tax, regardless of energy source (although gas should still be taxed on its own). GWVR and VMT pretty much measure how much impact a car has on road maintenance, so it makes sense to charge heavier vehicles and vehicles that drive more, more.

I think it even makes sense for semis, the cost may go up for goods slightly as they pass that cost onto customers, but we'd be paying less in federal taxes for roads, less in property taxes for roads, and if you drive less (good for health, environment, etc) you'll likely be saving money. It also more accurately taxes EVs with ICEs based on road wear and tear instead of all these haphazard ideas.

Just tax the roads themselves. Wear is the problem after all, disincentivise it.

where are those damn flying cars they promised

> This is why I advocate for a gross vehicle weight rating and vehicle miles traveled tax

The problem is, while that works out on highways and other federally owned road, the distribution on state or county/city level is almost impossible. Say you have a trucking company doing regional service and one doing interstate transport - both their fleets will have similar driven miles because economically, companies want their many-hundred-thousand-dollar assets to be on the road as long as traffic safety laws allow. Now, assuming they both pay the same mile tax to the state... the state makes an insane profit on the interstate trucking company given that only a low percentage of the miles driven were happening on that state's roads, with the clear majority being on federal highways and other states' roads.

I disagree.

Roads are a public good.

Having a road available to use, is worth almost as much as actually using it.

Not to mention all the positive externalities of a better connected country (more trade, business, economic growth).

I use a road in my 1100kg car, you use it in your 2200kg car. You cause 8 times the damage. Do you generate 8 times the positive externalities?

Yes?

The positive externalities created by trucks shipping food into cities massively outweigh almost all passenger traffic.

So charging by weight/road damage makes no sense.

The truck that the parent poster refers to is not a 16-wheeler or panel truck used for commercial purposes, but someone's impeccably clean F-150 that hasn't hauled anything in 2+ years

Do you eat red meat ? sugary drinks ? do you exercise ? Do you have XYZ gene ?

You're costing X times more to the system because you're diabetic/obese/predisposed ? You should pay more!

That's how it sounds, and if we want to live like that we can go back to cavemen times, because we didn't built societies to play this silly game

Maybe we should go back to having private roads then, and have people who own the roads decide.

Instead of that, they could mandate meters on the charging stations that add a surcharge to the electricity. That would be less invasive, and be analogous to how they collect usage fees by taxing gas.

There is a general legal principle that the state must use the least intrusive means to accomplish a goal. A lawsuit might force a change.

Except you can charge from every single outlet.

Sounds like tax evasion.

You still need a charger/adapter between the outlet and the vehicle. Perhaps build the meter into the vehicles charging port.

You have got to be kidding me. Next you’ll say that properly inflating your tires is “tax evasion” because you’ll burn less gas.

In my country you pay an anual fee for having a vehicle, like property tax but for vehicles. The larger the vehicle, more you pay, discount if you have an EV (no emissions). It's not that difficult.

Which is crazy. Use a car for 500 miles a year you pay the same as someone using it for 50,000 miles a year

Just charge on the odometer reading each year. 3p a mile or whatever. Maybe charge more based on weight.

Power and fuel are still taxed on usage basis. There is no real difference except that road maintenance is also funded by a basic fee. It's a two way system.

Which is basically what we do in NZ. We have Road User Charges (RUC) that you buy in advance. We put road tax on petrol, so petrol vehicles don't pay RUCs. But no road tax on diesel, because tractors and other machinery that doesn't go on public roads. So we just extend the same RUC system for diesel vehicles to EVs.

(But not yet because we were incentivising EV up take. RUCs for EVs will be required in 2024 I believe.)

EV drivers more than make this up by not having nearly as many externalities (pollution) as gas drivers. Gas drivers seem to always conveniently forget those real societal costs when they're trying to talk about "fairness".

That still doesn't pay for roads. I love EVs and think their use should be more broadly encouraged, but the gas tax made for a very simple use tax and it's not obvious how one would replace it to do the same thing for EVs.

Simply saying EVs are so much better for the environment that they don't need to pay for roads at all seems a little short sighted.

>it's not obvious how one would replace it to do the same thing for EVs.

Taxing tires would work. Also, mileage is already recorded during vehicle inspections. That could be used to calculate tax but would be more open to fraud.

I don't want tires to be taxed, it would incentivize people to use tires more than they would do today, and that is bad news for traffic safety. Not only for themselves but for other people on the road too.

> by not having nearly as many externalities (pollution) as gas drivers

Depend where you get your electricity from. Also most of car pollution comes from tires and brake dust, which EV create more of given their weight and torque

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre...

See, we can play this silly game all day long or just all chip in.

The article you linked is specifically talking about particle emissions, not anything gaseous. If it included the negative externalities of all emissions (CO2, NOx's too), it might paint a different picture.

That’s a very cute argument, but it doesn’t pay for the roads.

Also, having lived in a city I can tell you that brake dust and tire wear is also a big part of car pollution.

Unless you want 100% toll roads, we need to come up with fair-ish way to tax EV road use.

How much fuel-tax revenue do we think Utah is recovering from EV drivers?

I would guess that we are talking about very small numbers -- certainly under 5% of drivers.[1] Whatever principle Utah is asserting to "recover" fuel taxes from EV drivers isn't making much of a difference.

At the same time, the Utah policy is clearly discouraging EV adoption.

> EVs also wear roads more than gas cars do, on average, because of their higher weight.

We are talking about a small presence in the automobile market. If everyone were to drive a Tesla, then yes we would have more heavy passenger cars on the road.

For example, a 2023 Honda Civic weighs between 1,429 kg and 1,517 kg. One best-selling SUV, the Toyota RAV4, weighs 1755 kg.

But the most popular type of vehicle in the US (and in Utah) by sales is the pick-up truck. The top three pick-up trucks each weigh about 2500 kg.

If we are going to start quibbling about weight this way, we will need to recognise that drivers of vehicles should be taxed according to their obesity to maintain our roadways.

[1] https://electrek.co/2022/08/24/current-ev-registrations-in-t...

ICE vehicles do pay taxes by weight. Larger vehicles use more fuel and pay more taxes.

But this isn't necessarily proportional to the amount of wear-and-tear they cause on roads.

If you want true accuracy you're going to need to track the car 24/7 which would be unpopular.

Or worse - it could be popular.

> And it's not linear wear per pound, either.

If it's not linear then the difference between a 4000 lbs car vs a 3000 lbs one is nothing compared to the damage done by a loaded 80 000 lbs truck.

What I notice, on european highways: it's always the rightmost lane that is deformed. The leftmost lane is never deformed. The aquaplanning risks due to water present in two bands on the lane is always on the rightmost lane. Always, always, always.

Why? Because the rightmost lane is the one trucks do use.

Where I live atm, in the middle of nowhere, there are two things deforming the road: heavy vehicles (I'm not talking about 4000 lbs cars here but tractors / trucks) and... Tree roots. Most of the patches made on the road are due to tree roots lifting the road's concrete.

My hunch is that the wear caused by both ic and ev cars is negligible comared to trucks. All road use taxes, including gas, subsidize heavy trucking.

> pay an exorbitant registration fee (hundreds more than other vehicles)

By which you mean $130 (equating to ~13,000 miles driven under the 1 cent-per-mile pricing)?

https://roadusagecharge.utah.gov/faq.php#fees

I agree it should be easier and more privacy-preserving to measure real usage (e.g., an odometer read once a year or something like that).

No, mine was over $340. The fee for my Civic was ~$100.

Try living in California. My $42K EV was closer to $600 for the registration.

Seattle suburbs here. I pay about $500 a year to register my (gas) car so someday I can ride the train they broke ground on 25 years ago.

Wow. I'm on the other side of Puget Sound from Seattle, over in Kitsap county, and I'm paying just under $70/year to register my car (a 2006 Honda CR-V).

I knew there were extra costs in King county (and Pierce and Snohomish counties) due to a regional transit excise tax but had no idea it could raise costs that much.

It looks like it is 1.1% of MSRP x depreciation, where depreciation comes from this table [1]. Ouch!

[1] https://www.dol.wa.gov/regional-transit-authority-rta-motor-...

OP's car is heavier and 10x more expensive than yours. Don't read too much into their figure. The King County RTA fee floors at $40, I think, which is what you would pay with a 2006 era vehicle. There's also a $40 Transportation Benefit District fee in the city. I suspect you would pay approximately what I do ($160/year) in the city, or less ($120/year) outside of city limits.

My gas car registration fees in Seattle are $160/year total. Of that either $80 or $120 is flat by weight and the remainder scales by value. If your fees are $500/year, your vehicle is extremely heavy, expensive, or both.

It's a newish BMW SUV, so both.

Sounds to me like the system is working exactly as it should.

It's kind of funny, because from my perspective I'm an old man who learned himself a trade decades ago and worked things right to the point that I don't have to drive around a shit-box anymore, but to you I'm a privileged asshole. Which one is the truth?

There’s a big gulf between “not a shit box” and “new expensive luxury SUV” and it’s pretty reasonable to tax more expensive vehicles proportionally.

Nobody called you an asshole, that's you projecting what you assume people think of you. They suggested that your being owning a luxury vehicle means you can afford and should contribute slightly more to society than somebody who doesn't, which is a lot more reasonable than calling you an asshole who needs to be punished.

You aren't taxed more on larger, more expensive vehicles because the powers that be (or the poster you were responding to) think you're a privileged asshole. You're taxed more because heavier vehicles cause more road wear, and because Washington has no income tax (which are typically progressive in nature), so the rest of their tax system needs to lean more progressive to make up for that. Thus, more expensive vehicles get taxed more.

Did you benefit from paying no state income taxes for decades? Well, now you're paying a little back into the system. I'd think you'd be happy to do that, after having paid no state income taxes for so long. I'd also think you were well aware of the registration taxes when you purchased the vehicle? If so, given these two facts, why are you complaining about it?

You can still be an asshole if you want of course, but being an asshole has nothing to do with your registration taxes.

The effect of weight on Washington state vehicle registration cost is small. It is probably only contributing less than $40 to his registration cost.

What is pushing his cost way up by hundreds of dollars is the regional transit excise tax that some Washington counties have. That tax is based on the value of the vehicle, which is the MSRP discounted by a depreciation factor. The tax is 1.1% of depreciated value.

One thing to look into. If you're married, give the vehicle to your spouse, and note the amount of the gift in a notarized letter. That then becomes the value of the vehicle for tax purposes. We live in a state that essentially has an import tax on vehicles. It's unconstitutional, but you'd have to take that to court and that would take years. We did this with our vehicles when we moved to the state. The person at the vehicle registration place was unhappy, but they had to accept it - an extra benefit.

You're not an asshole to drive around a ride you've earned.

Statists will always find some rationale for taxing more that sounds perfectly reasonable and good, when its obvious the motivation is envy.

I need a source to believe gifting something something allows you to use a false appraisal.

Kelly Blue Book is a thing. Possibly enforcement just hasn't caught up with this guy

WA state simply does not recognize valuations below blue book. My dad sold me my first car for below (blue book) market value and it was just assessed as if it were sold at blue book value.

It's just part of the cost of ownership. Not classy to balk about a few hundred bucks more to register your car when you've paid tens of thousands for it, and are also paying more to insure it, and to maintain it, and in depreciation. Presumably you anticipated all that in the purchase as part of the TCO. Not to mention, the tradition of wealthier persons contributing more to society stretches back in Western civ to the Roman period at least. Better IMO to take some pride in your attainment of some small aspect of patrician status rather than resentment at the responsibilities that come with it.

West Seattle? :)

My non-plugin hybrid is charged the EV registration fee in WA. They say it's to support adding more EV chargers, but I can't even use them. It's not terrible, but an additional $75/yr is stupid IMHO...this is more expensive that my gas guzzling truck (which is higher than a car because of it's weight).

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/was...

Well it kinda makes sense - eventually you will have to use EV chargers because ICE cars will get phased out entirely(maybe not in 10 but in 30 years for sure) so we're all paying forward for the infrastructure that we're all going to need.

No -- gas cars don't pay the EV charger fee. It makes no sense for GP's non-plugin hybrid to pay it.

Well if they don't then why is OP's car required to pay it then?

I think you've touched on why OP was complaining about it!

If your EV is worth ~2.1x the Civic, that would track (~$210 in value-scaled registration + $130 EV tax). Given how much EVs cost, that ratio wouldn’t be terribly surprising.

Taxes on EV are just starting. A lot of taxes come from gas in the first place and once the market for EV is ripe the goverment will unleash the tax whip on the EV category before you know it. It is inevitable.

Taxes on EVs will be at a maximum just before around 20% if the market is EV, as they’re seen as a way to soak/punish people who are weird (ie early adopters). Once people actually see how disproportionate the fees are and if significant numbers of voters have to pay them, support will drop.

They will forbid combustion engines anyway so you wont have a choice

It's amazing how nosey Utah is. They want to scan your DL to find out who's buying alcohol, they're demanding id based age verification for watching porn online, and apparently they want to enforce monitoring on your phone+car.

Amazing? Maybe. Surprising? Hardly.

Not too surprising seeing as how it is practically a theocracy.

All places are theocracies, most people just don’t understand what a religion is or that they are in one, especially the ones who believe they are not in a religion.

As an outsider my impression of Utah it is just a state run by a religious niche group.

You're not wrong.

The state itself is at least half Mormon. When you get out of Salt Lake and Ogden, it's a lot more. But there's a lot of scenery and skiing and outdoors things to do. There's a lot of things right with the state. (Start with cities that are safer than expected for their size. Mormons have something to do with that, too.)

But in terms of how the state is run... yeah, you're not wrong.

That actually kinda makes sense. EVs should pay their share to use the roads too.

(Gas taxes are a relatively small fraction of roads funding, for what it's worth.)

I'd be interested in seeing the numbers, and how they slice it up (whether they're completely treating federal roads separately or using it for the total, etc), as at $0.364 per gallon in Utah, it seems like it results in a large amount to put towards funding something, so it would be interesting to track where it's going.

Utah’s cent per mile program treats all roads the same, including roads outside of the state.

That didn’t answer the question

I was responding to this aside, not the question:

> whether they're completely treating federal roads separately or using it for the total, etc

The tax does not distinguish types of road, much like a gas tax does not.

That sounds like it's equating Utah's taxing to total U.S. road funding, to which I say both "duh" about the result and "that can't be all that's going on in the report if it's about Utah, so there must be some disconnect in what we're talking about."

The context we were in is Utah gas taxes and how much it affects road funding that Utah does. Were you referring to something different? I would assume that Utah gas taxes, if they are intended to fund road work, would go towards state roads in Utah (but that's just an assumption, which is why I was interested in the source).

Indeed, gas taxes act as a sort of carbon tax, so taxing EVs to compensate is like getting rid of a carbon tax.

That isn't the stated purpose of most gas taxes, though. (The stated purpose is funding roads programs.) Intuitively, EVs still need to use and pay for road use. It's probably better for legislatures to explicitly pass carbon taxes (or similar things like cap-and-trade programs).

No, gas taxes were always seen as part of conservation measures as well, especially since the 1970s. I see this claim all the time that gas taxes are purely a use tax, and that hasn’t been true for about half a century or longer, and just about everyone knows this, so I consider that kind of claim to be dishonest.

And yes, it’s less efficient than a carbon tax, but fundamentally you cannot deny the net effect of getting rid of the conservation aspect of gas taxes BEFORE passing a compensating carbon tax would have the effect of basically eliminating a carbon tax.

In other words, let’s talk about adding compensatory EV fees AFTER passing a carbon tax. Sounds fair and certainly better for climate.

WA state is also ridiculous about this: I can understand a road usage tax to replace the gas tax we're not paying, but they also charge an additional fee on top of that for a state fund to add more EV charging stations, even though logically it should be ICE drivers who are paying this to help incentivize the transition! People who already bought EVs clearly aren't concerned with the number of charging stations which exist now.

It strikes me just how detached and ignorant your perspective is, largely not because it bothers me that people like you exist, but how it seems practically impossible for such detached and decadent perspectives to proliferate without collapse being imminent.

So you, member of the spoiled rotten, pilfering upper strata, parasitizing the larger society while at the same time degenerating it, want the regular people you are living off in decadence, to also pay not just current rates, but even higher rates so you can see your utopian, egotist, narcissistic vision come to fruition?

You want people who can’t afford the luxury of EVs and who are already being destroyed and pillaged by the likes of your strata, to on top of that abuse, also pay more?

Do you want them to also just eat cake? Or perhaps maybe they should also just try being billionaires? Just stop being poor, people. Right?

It’s unfortunate that humans seem to have made essentially zero progress in preventing what has been captured in numerous stories. Possibly the most relevant one being that Hubris is struck down by Nemesis; the origins of those two words themselves, something most people do not even realize.

If you ever have the chance, there is an excellent statue of Hubris in the Louvre. It is a bit hidden and tucked away, which makes it all the more prescient. Note when it was created.

>Do you want them to also just eat cake? Or perhaps maybe they should also just try being billionaires? Just stop being poor, people. Right?

I think billionaires are buying private planes, not EVs. The people buying EVs for their daily transportation several orders of magnitude closer to being homeless than they are to being billionaires.

We've banned this account for egregiously breaking the site guidelines. You can't do that here, regardless of how right your views are or you feel they are.

Normally I'd just post a warning but your account has a pattern of breaking the site guidelines repeatedly. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Why do you think a few hundred dollars is "exorbitant"?

Greater than the equivalent state gas tax.

It’s not just Utah. Oregon has been talking for the better part of a decade about the best way to have EV owners help pay for road maintenance. Both the things you mention are things they have tried in large scale tests. I imagine most states are trying to figure out the same thing and coming up with solutions similar to Utah (or, more likely, Utah got the ideas from other states).

It's shocking to me that it requires an OBD device and a surveillance app. Can't they just check your odometer when you go to update your registration?

That would require trusting the public. But no, we are required to trust the government and some sketchy third parties I've never heard of.

State probably gets a kickback from the third parties for the information they get about the drivers.

They do that in AU / VIC for the EV road use tax, you have to upload a photo. I don't see the problem, just make it illegal to lie and fine the ones you catch.

Take the car from the ones you catch.

Eventually of course road taxes need to be extracted from something other than fuel. How soon that switch is made just depends on how long you want gas car drivers to subsidize the roads for EV drivers. I think most would agree that the time to stop that subsidizing is "not yet".

Why you would need to track how much a vehicle is driven I don't understand though. Unless you want to measure how far it's driven within some geographical area (such as a state) and can't merely charge for the total distance driven, but that seems unnecessarily complex, given that a car will only be registered in one region and it should balance out across state borders.

So at the anual/biannual mandatory inspections (which make a lot more sense to add if they aren't already mandatory, than any tracking!) just check the distance driven and charge road tax accordingly.

I pay around $800/year for road tax for my car. And $8/gallon for the fuel. And that's fine.

* * *

There's a gulf between "fuel tax drops 50% leading to budget shortfalls" and "drops 99% to insignificant revenue" and states still need to pay for roads during that window.

I don't agree with the language you used but EV drivers are not paying the taxes that were levied to maintain roads. And obviously the EV's use the roads.