News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on To Save Money on Insurance, Drivers Agree to Intrusive Monitoring Technology. Parent comment

Re:To Save Money on Insurance, Drivers Agree to Intrusive Mo... by timbre1234 on Thursday June 29, 2023 @06:27AM (#36518625)
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".
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:To Save Money on Insurance, Drivers Agree to Intrusive Mo... by luma on Thursday June 29, 2023 @06:39AM (#36518691)
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.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:To Save Money on Insurance, Drivers Agree to Intrusive Mo... by 34679 on Thursday June 29, 2023 @07:34AM (#36519054)
>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.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:To Save Money on Insurance, Drivers Agree to Intrusive Mo... by flavius29663 on Thursday June 29, 2023 @08:09AM (#36519353)
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.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:To Save Money on Insurance, Drivers Agree to Intrusive Mo... by lm28469 on Thursday June 29, 2023 @09:28AM (#36520074)
> 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.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:To Save Money on Insurance, Drivers Agree to Intrusive Mo... by etskinner on Friday June 30, 2023 @07:04AM (#36532866)
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.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:To Save Money on Insurance, Drivers Agree to Intrusive Mo... by bequanna on Thursday June 29, 2023 @09:28AM (#36520075)
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.

[ Parent | on HN ]