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Utah and Oregon Now Require GPS Trackers on EVs, Tax Drivers by the Mile
- KennethVZW 3y agoWhat about a hybrid car like a Chevrolet Volt? I use gas and electricy ??? If I had to pay per mile driven, there are lots of times I'd be double taxed. That wouldn't be fair...
- angiosperm 3y agoIt would suffice to track their charge/discharge cycles. GPS seems like overreach, and ought to be vulnerable to court challenge. Somebody else suggested taxing tires, but that would be hard as tires are obtainable out of state. The underlying facts of road maintenance are that basically all of road maintenance (except that attributable to erosion of the roadbed) repairs damage caused by heavily-loaded trucks. Objectively, road damage goes exponentially with axle load. Cars' axle loading is so far below that of laden trucks as to to be wholly negligible. Thus, the justifiable taxation for road usage, if any, should fall on truck operators. Car owners benefit from truck traffic about equally with non-owners, however many cars they have, but moreso if their income is higher. So, the legitimately defensible way to pay for roads is straight from the general fund.
- olliej 3y agoMy thinking was that there's been court pushback against dragnet requests on Google, etc but would that apply to data the government has mandated drivers provide?
- the_lego 3y agoIt applies even more, as the 4th amendment limits specifically government searches.
- SnorkelTan 3y agoPower utility bill as well for home charging.
- lockhouse 3y agoEven easier, if the intent is to charge a tax per mile, simply record the mileage every year for inspection and registration renewal and charge based on the difference. GPS trackers are a massive privacy overreach and people should not be okay with them. They are not necessary to levy road usage taxes.
- legitster 3y ago> The underlying facts of road maintenance are that basically all of road maintenance (except that attributable to erosion of the roadbed) repairs damage caused by heavily-loaded trucks. Maintenance costs for existing road surfaces are caused by trucks. But the majority of costs for roads are still new construction, and things like intersections and traffic revisions. All of which are prompted by driver traffic. And besides, trucks already have additional taxes that they are assessed based on their load weight.
- angiosperm 3y agoIt is true that new construction accounts for a large fraction of the total cost. But the extra truck tax revenue is far, far below the proportional cost of damage trucks cause. Everyone benefits from roads' existence and from the freight delivered by truck, with or without owning a car. So tying taxes artificially to any selective use factors is inherently flawed. Tying it to GPS logs is worse.
- legitster 3y agoThe vast, vast majority of roads are never touched by a freight truck. If you think of all of the roads built to support every house, apartment, suburban intersection they may cost upwards of a million dollars a mile to build but require little maintenance once built. So if you are only looking at who is incurring repair/maintenance cost, you are still only caring about a tiny cost center overall of DOTs. I'm not arguing that GPS is a good idea, but tying road income to overall road usage is a good positive incentive that we don't want to axe completely.
- olliej 3y agoNot sure why this requires GPS rather than odometer reading/reporting. IIRC NZ did (does?) odometer reading based taxation on diesel vehicles because so many diesel vehicles are off road only. That's fundamentally the same problem: you're ostensibly taxing road users to cover road maintenance (except fuel taxes don't cover the whole amount), and EV vehicles aren't paying those taxes but are clearly using the roads.
- thedougd 3y agoIt’s a bizarre overreach. There are simpler, less invasive solutions than a GPS tracker. Maybe someone is getting rich off the scheme?
- millzlane 3y agoIt would be easier and make more sense to just enact a road tax on tires.
- angiosperm 3y agoTires can be obtained via a quick trip out of state.
- lockhouse 3y agoThat’s true of most taxes. People buy gas and cigarettes at Native American reservations all the time. How many people pay sales or income taxes for a private sale? Lots of people do landscaping, farm work, and simple handyman work “under the table” without paying income taxes. Preventing tax avoidance is a terrible excuse for Big Brother surveillance.
- angiosperm 3y agoIt just means you want a better way to assess tax liability than buying tires. We are not limited to "tires or GPS"; we have myriad other alternatives.
- mistrial9 3y agotrack private vehicles at all times to enforce taxation+ .. what could go wrong?
- lotsofpulp 3y agoAlready happens on toll roads pretty much everywhere.
- vondur 3y agoYou can bet every state is looking at this method to tax EV and Plug-In Hybrid users. If there's not any pushback, they will want to have it for all vehicles.
- talldatethrow 3y agoI wonder how they'll even track gas vs EV miles on plugin hybrids. I guess it's also tied into the OBD2 system and is checking? What happens if I block the gps signal? Is my car bricked? Updates later? What if I spoof it to think it's never moving. Or never using EV mode. Crazy.
- rmason 3y agoWhat is really troubling to me is the possibility of the state selling the data. All of a sudden your insurance company will jack up your rates for your lead foot even though you are accident and ticket free. Miss a car payment and the repo man knows exactly where your car is located. Wife has questions about your fidelity and the private detective can track your every movement. It's not even law yet here in Michigan and it has already got people talking.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoInsurance companies already offer discounts for people who opt in to tracked driving. A lender keeping track of the collateral for their lent money does not seem crazy to me. If anything, it should lower costs for responsible borrowers as the lender’s risk is reduced. Spouses can also track each other via Find my Friends or similar apps. If there is a lack of trust, then it would already be obvious.
- lockhouse 3y agoThese examples are opted into, so it’s not the same thing as this at all.
- legitster 3y ago> Owing to the federal government-prodded transition to electric vehicles (EVs) to combat something called “climate change,” ... In this case, said birds are: getting rid of gas-powered cars, inventing for themselves a brand-new revenue generation scheme, and instituting even more tracking power to make sure the peasants behave themselves. Lol, wtf is this website? If you go to read the actual reporting, the Oregon administrators are much more even-keeled about the thing: > "I understand that concern, but anybody that has a cell phone — the ability is already there for it to be tracked," Lively said. "Your cell phone is probably the most trackable device we own and almost everybody has one. But there are several options. We made options that people could just annually, monthly turn in their mileage. So they can tell us where the mileage started, where the mileage didn't, so that's one way they can report versus reporting from the car — so there's several ways in which people can report their mileage. > "But the key in doing it automatically is the systems now in place allow us to know whether they're driving on state highways or private roads, because our goal isn't to charge you for driving on private roads but only when they're using the state transportation system." https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/the-story/odot-gas-tax-electric-vehicle-pay-per-mile/283-fad1a341-0550-4c70-aa93-bfe5ead3f4c4 https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/the-story/odot-gas-ta...
- JohnFen 3y ago> Your cell phone is probably the most trackable device we own and almost everybody has one This is legitimately one of the stupidest arguments that could be made for systems like this. First, owning a cell phone is optional, and even if you do own one, it's not that uncommon for people to shut them down for privacy reasons. "You already put up with this device doing a bad thing, so you should be OK with other devices doing the bad thing as well" is a very weak argument.
- legitster 3y agoSure, but this is a pilot program (not a requirement yet as the linked article wrongly states) and it should be somewhat positive that they are at least thinking about that. Also, the quote makes it pretty clear that this program IS optional if people would rather just report their mileage manually.
- SnorkelTan 3y agoFor those interested about CA & fed taxes not being paid, from another thread about EVs I posted this breakdown of CA gas taxes: 1. 54 cents in state excise tax 2. 18.4 cents in federal excise tax 3. An average of 3.7% in state and local sales taxes 4. 23 cents for California's cap-and-trade program to lower greenhouse gas emissions 5. 18 cents for the state's low-carbon fuel programs 6. 2 cents for underground gas storage fees 4, 5, and 6 are not applicable to EVs. In California EVs are avoiding ~$15 per full charge in taxes (according to comparison of my 18 gallon ICE car @ $3/gal (pre-tax gas)). Not intending this to be anti-ev, just noting the tax avoidance benefits of EVs. source: https://www.cbs8.com/article/traffic/gas-prices/gap-between-californias-gas-prices-and-the-us-has-never-been-larger/509-17522867-a344-4cbc-bc5d-ac617eb21268 https://www.cbs8.com/article/traffic/gas-prices/gap-between-...
- jamincan 3y agoIs me not smoking and therefore not paying an excise tax on cigarettes considered tax avoidance? Surely using less fuel and therefore avoiding the excise tax on it is the entire point of applying it to fuel in the first place.
- SnorkelTan 3y agoTaxes 1-3 are for funding of roads, schools, etc. This isn't a valid comparison since EV users still use roads and schools but are no longer paying for them. Taxes 4,5,6 would be comparable to quitting smoking. Hence not needing to pay them and why I didn't include them in the calculation.
- dragonwriter 3y ago1, 2, and 3 still function as (and, even taken with the others, are still insufficient as, given the externalities involved) Pigovian taxes on the harms of fossil fuel consumption and so are equally inapplicable to EVs.
- SnorkelTan 3y agoSo when everyone drives an electric vehicle, who's going to pay for road maintenance EV users are now expecting to use for free?
- bhhaskin 3y agoAnd I am sure they are using a 3rd party vendor that has in their TOS the ability to sell that information. This is going to be abused to hell and back. A much simpler and privacy minded solution is to tax the chargers, just like taxing the gas pumps.
- BluePen8 3y agoMaybe I’m projecting my own personal experience, but I doubt public chargers are a significant percentage of most people’s charging. Before buying an EV, I was super concerned with public charging infrastructure. Now as an owner, I’ve only used public charging enough to verify it works. With 300+ miles of range it just isn’t a concern, I either have enough to go and return, or am staying long enough to charge the car enough to return (I visit family 200 miles away at least monthly). I’ve owned the car for 2.5 months and 5,200 miles. 12% of my charging has been public, and 43% of that was in the first 3 days because the car didn’t come with a charger and it took a week to arrive. So based on my own experience, I’d expect public charging to be a negligible single digit %.
- JohnFen 3y agoIf I have to have a GPS tracker to own and operate a vehicle, I am not buying that vehicle.
- theflyingelvis 3y agoFrom a cost perspective, I’d take this deal. Would save me over $120 / year
- hendersoon 3y agoHopefully this fails in the inevitable litigation. I could come up with 5 better solutions off the top of my head. Luddite politicians, sigh.
- callalex 3y agoWas this lobbied for by the fossil fuel industry in order to sabotage sale of EVs?
- COGlory 3y agoMisleading. Programs appear to be trial and voluntary. Title states "require".
- tssva 3y agoBoth of these programs are currently voluntary. The service Utah utilizes requires a GPS device. The Oregon program has 3 milage accounting programs EV owners can choose from. 2 of these require using a GPS device. 1 of these is working to eliminate the GPS device requirement. The provider which currently doesn't require a GPS device is the Oregon Department of Transportation. EV's in each of these states pay a higher registration fee than non-EV vehicles. By enrolling in these programs EV owners pay the same registration fee as for non-EV vehicles and then pay per mile up to the amount of the normal EV registration fee. There was a Oregon senate bill introduced this year to make participation mandatory for EVs but the bill died in committee.