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Meanwhile the backwards state of Wisconsin has a special extra tax for hybrid vehicles, and then an even larger extra tax for electric vehicles [1]. The justifi

• lazylizard 6y ago
  that implies that electricity is unfairly undertaxed. solution is to tax electricity not 1 of the uses of electricity?
  • quasse 6y ago
    I guess I'm not quite following, especially since any electricity used by a non-plugin hybrid vehicle is generated directly from gasoline. If the goal was truly to "fairly" tax road use, registration fees should be based on vehicle weight and not fuel type.
    • overscore 6y ago
      Axle weight and mileage, surely?
• pengaru 6y ago
  Not that I'm anti-EV, but it's probably worth noting that EVs like Tesla's are both heavier and more torquey than the average ICE econobox. They might be causing more than their fair share of road wear. Especially considering you can treat every stop as a drag race in relative silence.
  • adrianN 6y ago
    If you want to tax according to wear, almost every car is pretty much free and trucks become insanely expensive. Road wear is something like axle weight to the fourth power.
  • brianwawok 6y ago
    Road wear is like cubic? With vehicle weight. Would take 10000 Tesla’s to wear the road the same as one truck. https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weight-vs-road-damage-levels/ https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh... If you want to EV tax me for road wear fine. Please tax trucks at least 1000x, and please tax all gas burning cars for the lung cancer and other negative externalities they cause.
    • ByteJockey 6y ago
      Yeah trucks are subsidized because without them most populated areas wouldn't have food, and people tend to like food. Also basically every every other material good. I think people would probably scream pretty loud if food suddenly jumped in price 10x, but maybe we could handle it like most places handle sales tax? Exempt trucks carrying food/necessities and tax everything else.
      • vkou 6y ago
        Most trucks don't deliver food. And if that sort of tax policy would severely impact the cost of food, we'd be better off with direct subsidies for groceries.
      • Wowfunhappy 6y ago
        > Yeah trucks are subsidized because without them most populated areas wouldn't have food, and people tend to like food. The cost of transportation should just be included in the good. That way, if someone comes up with an ingenious new method of urban farming or something, they'll get rewarded in the market for cost savings.
    • akira2501 6y ago
• tbihl 6y ago
  Road maintenance has to be funded, and will be done in a way that avoids change and angering people who actually care (when change becomes necessary) while being at least a hypothetically good faith effort at fairness. So you shouldn't expect to get tolls (people who drive a lot will care more, plus wealthy suburbanites are more likely to fight this) or weight-based registration (no one drives more than truckers...) So "hey, those guys stopped paying their share" can be passed,and that's what happens.
• throwaway201103 6y ago
  Trucks pay a lot of taxes, both in fuel and otherwise. True everyone who uses diesel pays those fuel taxes, but the number of diesel passenger cars in the USA is so small that it can be ignored. In 2016 commercial trucks paid $18.4 billion in federal highway user taxes and $21.6 billion in state highway user taxes[1] [1] https://www.ccjdigital.com/heres-how-much-trucking-paid-in-highway-user-taxes-in-2014/ https://www.ccjdigital.com/heres-how-much-trucking-paid-in-h...
  • ProfessorLayton 6y ago
    Commercial trucks may be paying more taxes nominally but they are not paying for the road wear that they cause. A commercial long-hauler causes 1,408 times more damage than a passenger vehicle. Even something like a garbage truck is 1,279x worse [1]. What can’t be ignored is the level of subsidies being offered to heavy vehicles. [1] https://www.lrrb.org/pdf/201432.pdf https://www.lrrb.org/pdf/201432.pdf
• dawnerd 6y ago
  Oregon is doing the same too, but based on fuel economy. It's ridiculous that someone with a gas guzzler will pay less. It's the wrong move to transition us to alternative fuels.
• kortilla 6y ago
  That only sounds ridiculous if you don’t realize that fuel is being taxed to pay for roads and not for its externalities. Up until the last 10 years, it wasn’t feasible to use the road with a heavy vehicle without burning fuel so it was a shortcut to put road tax on the fuel instead of tolls everywhere. This is why farmers use red dyed diesel that has the tax excluded. They are still emitting just as much but aren’t wearing down the road.
  • estaseuropano 6y ago
    Money is fungible. Don't confuse a narrative/explanation with actual use of funds. Cars cause a lot of externalities and likely the tax is still too low, but it would be naive to think the funds collected one way are exactly used for an earmarked purpose.