3 ms·

Driving is increasingly affordable which will drive a new wave of taxes to capture the surplus. A high utilization Tesla Model 3 has costs per mile, including

by zaroth 8y ago

Driving is increasingly affordable which will drive a new wave of taxes to capture the surplus. A high utilization Tesla Model 3 has costs per mile, including electricity, of around $0.10-$0.15/mile. For comparison, the gas tax alone on the average vehicle was about $0.01-$0.02/mile 10 years ago. (Depends on your state and your MPG) When that vehicle can drive itself from most Point As to most Point Bs on most days, public transit doesn’t have prayer of competing. So new regimes will be needed to fund the roads, but roads are one of the few good things government does for me. I really like roads. Make more and make them better, make them smooth and make them smart. Make them safe and make them fast. And then we will all use them to go out every day and make money. The good news is we won’t need a lot of new parking spaces in this rapidly approaching future. But we will need some new forms of taxing driving, and I’m mostly afraid of the privacy implications.

colechristensen 8y ago
Gas tax is a usage tax to fund transit cost, they _should_ be taxing electrics. Delaying a few years to accelerate the transition is fine but it will ultimately have to happen. What isn't so easy is taxing based on actual usage which a gas tax does fairly well. Resisting a government GPS tracker to tax you appropriately will be important in the coming years.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  What will inevitably happen is they'll tax miles and gas. Because revenue streams never go away and government has no qualms about screwing the poor so long as it can be framed in a politically useful way (screwing those backwards hicks who still drive cars).
  - colechristensen 8y ago
    Roads are expensive and it makes sense to fund them partly at least proportional to use. People who don't drive cars are unusual, if you think otherwise you're in a bubble and don't much understand the rest of the country.
prolepunk 8y ago
> A high utilization Tesla Model 3 has costs per mile, including electricity, of around $0.10-$0.15/mile. > For comparison, the gas tax alone on the average vehicle was about $0.01-$0.02/mile 10 years ago. (Depends on your state and your MPG) > When that vehicle can drive itself from most Point As to most Point Bs on most days, public transit doesn’t have prayer of competing. Basically you're talking about a highly utilized, self-driving electric vehicle with virtually infinite range. I believe you're describing Vancouver SkyTrain -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver)
- zaroth 8y ago
  Yes, but replace 53 fixed pickup and drop off locations, with pickup and drop off “virtually anywhere”. And replace a fixed timetable schedule and massive upfront capital costs with perfectly elastic timetables and consumer subsidized capital costs (Tesla Fleet). Double the top speed. Add a few zeros to the daily ridership. Add 4 zeros to the number of vehicles. Etc... Putting people on rails makes no sense when the electric cars drive themselves.
  - shkkmo 8y ago
    > Putting people on rails makes no sense when the electric cars drive themselves. Um... traffic? Road infrastructure costs? Energy efficiency?
    - zaroth 8y ago
      Road cost efficiency increases the more small vehicle traffic you put on it. Think high speed autonomous caravans. The cost per mile is already too low. That’s the over-demand problem being discussed in TFA. Autonomous driving technology will triple existing highway capacity by ~2050 when it becomes illegal to drive non-autonomously. That’s a lot of “free” infrastructure. We should not invest billions in light rail that will be unprofitable its entire life and archaic in 50 years.
      - 8y ago
tastygreenapple 8y ago
Who knows why you're being down-voted, you're not wrong. The economics of electric vehicles with million mile chassis and 300k mile batteries (going to 1m mile design life in Teslas next year) are incredible. I enjoy riding motorcycles because the performance per dollar has been unrivaled. However, the Model 3 Performance (heck, even the dual motor Model 3) is really incredible - it can sprint to 60 mph in ~3 seconds and it consumes very little energy per mile in regular driving. Once used Model 3s with full self driving are available for less than $30k, I'm going to strongly consider one. The only reason I haven't bought one outright is because I may come to find it makes more sense just to use the Tesla network for when I need a car. I run top-of-the-line tires on my motorcycle, doing so costs me around $0.06/mile, for the price of motorcycle tires I could depreciate a $60k car over 1 million miles! I imagine insurance will eventually favor the Tesla and the Tesla already costs less per mile in 'fuel'.

by zaroth 8y ago

colechristensen 8y ago

Gas tax is a usage tax to fund transit cost, they _should_ be taxing electrics. Delaying a few years to accelerate the transition is fine but it will ultimately have to happen. What isn't so easy is taxing based on actual usage which a gas tax does fairly well. Resisting a government GPS tracker to tax you appropriately will be important in the coming years.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
What will inevitably happen is they'll tax miles and gas. Because revenue streams never go away and government has no qualms about screwing the poor so long as it can be framed in a politically useful way (screwing those backwards hicks who still drive cars).
- colechristensen 8y ago
  Roads are expensive and it makes sense to fund them partly at least proportional to use. People who don't drive cars are unusual, if you think otherwise you're in a bubble and don't much understand the rest of the country.

prolepunk 8y ago

> A high utilization Tesla Model 3 has costs per mile, including electricity, of around $0.10-$0.15/mile. > For comparison, the gas tax alone on the average vehicle was about $0.01-$0.02/mile 10 years ago. (Depends on your state and your MPG) > When that vehicle can drive itself from most Point As to most Point Bs on most days, public transit doesn’t have prayer of competing. Basically you're talking about a highly utilized, self-driving electric vehicle with virtually infinite range. I believe you're describing Vancouver SkyTrain -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver)

zaroth 8y ago
Yes, but replace 53 fixed pickup and drop off locations, with pickup and drop off “virtually anywhere”. And replace a fixed timetable schedule and massive upfront capital costs with perfectly elastic timetables and consumer subsidized capital costs (Tesla Fleet). Double the top speed. Add a few zeros to the daily ridership. Add 4 zeros to the number of vehicles. Etc... Putting people on rails makes no sense when the electric cars drive themselves.
- shkkmo 8y ago
  > Putting people on rails makes no sense when the electric cars drive themselves. Um... traffic? Road infrastructure costs? Energy efficiency?
  - zaroth 8y ago
    Road cost efficiency increases the more small vehicle traffic you put on it. Think high speed autonomous caravans. The cost per mile is already too low. That’s the over-demand problem being discussed in TFA. Autonomous driving technology will triple existing highway capacity by ~2050 when it becomes illegal to drive non-autonomously. That’s a lot of “free” infrastructure. We should not invest billions in light rail that will be unprofitable its entire life and archaic in 50 years.
    - 8y ago

tastygreenapple 8y ago

Who knows why you're being down-voted, you're not wrong. The economics of electric vehicles with million mile chassis and 300k mile batteries (going to 1m mile design life in Teslas next year) are incredible. I enjoy riding motorcycles because the performance per dollar has been unrivaled. However, the Model 3 Performance (heck, even the dual motor Model 3) is really incredible - it can sprint to 60 mph in ~3 seconds and it consumes very little energy per mile in regular driving. Once used Model 3s with full self driving are available for less than $30k, I'm going to strongly consider one. The only reason I haven't bought one outright is because I may come to find it makes more sense just to use the Tesla network for when I need a car. I run top-of-the-line tires on my motorcycle, doing so costs me around $0.06/mile, for the price of motorcycle tires I could depreciate a $60k car over 1 million miles! I imagine insurance will eventually favor the Tesla and the Tesla already costs less per mile in 'fuel'.