4 ms·

EVs are starving states of tax money to fix potholes and build roads

ncr100 2y ago
Didn't read the article. Washington State is actively exploring taxing all drivers by mileage driven, self reported, to accommodate this shift.
- SlightlyLeftPad 2y ago
  Honor-system based taxes; Do they actually work?
  - jfim 2y ago
    It could if they make it so that the tax is also applied based on the miles driven whenever the car changes ownership or is disposed of at the end of its life. Cheating on the self reported mileage would only defer the tax, not avoid it.
    - excalq 2y ago
      I forsee even more dead vehicles ending up in blackberry thickets if that happens.
- floxy 2y ago
  Washington State currently has a flat $225 in electric vehicle fees. https://dol.wa.gov/vehicles-and-boats/vehicles/vehicle-registration/calculate-vehicle-tab-fees https://dol.wa.gov/vehicles-and-boats/vehicles/vehicle-regis... ...currently broken out as two separate "Electric Car" fees at $100 and $50, and a "Transportation electrification fee" at $75.
DannyBee 2y ago
This is kinda true, but places blame in the wrong place. The TL;DR is that the stress caused by EV's being heavier is miniscule in practice on any road with any meaningful truck traffic. Whoever is heaviest should be paying most of the cost of creation and maintenance. Sometimes this would be "any EV" + ICE trucks. For most of the roads being talked about, it would be larger trucking companies. Why? Roads are weird - the stress caused by axle load is a fourth power law. So one 5 axle truck causes as much stress as 10643 cars. Don't confuse stress with damage, because as the trucking associations (correctly) point out , properly designed and maintained roads aren't damaged by loads they are meant to handle - environmental factors matter as much to deterioration as anything else. But building, maintaining, and updating the roads so they can handle the load and not be damaged does cost much more for these roads than other ones. This is because roads with a single 5 axle truck has to be built to handle as much load as 10000 cars in order to not be damaged. It also has to be maintained in that state. So it's a bit of a red herring to say the trucks don't cause damage - this is true on roads designed for them (and not true on roads not designed for them) - but doesn't change the fact that they are causing most of the cost to build and maintain roads that can support large trucks. In the end, because of 4th power law here, the cost should be apportioned to who you have to design and maintain for. Nobody should be freeloading, whether it's ICE trucks, EV's, or larger trucks. Anything else is just one group externalizing costs onto another. For examples, in states that just use "mileage driven" and charge everyone the same, most drivers are subsidizing truckers and larger vehicles, and because of the 4th power law, often to an insane degree. Maybe that makes sense, but i've not seen good arguments as to why.
- DevelopingElk 2y ago
  There are multiple factors. There is vehicle related degradation and also weather related. In areas with a freeze that cycle road maintenance has a flat cost component. Someone needs to pay for roads.
  - DannyBee 2y ago
    I agree someone has to pay - but as I said, it should be in proportion to who is causing the cost. In places where it is totally flat, or even close to flat, cool, charge everyone (EV, non-EV). In places where it is not, charge everyone differently.
- viraptor 2y ago
  Good points, but I'd also add - ICE cars depend on continuous fuel delivery, done using heavy trucks. So this throws in another layer.
kelnos 2y ago
Assuming EVs are actually the cause, this seems like a problem with an obvious solution: make the vehicle registration fees for EVs higher.
anamax 2y ago
California has an EV-specific registration fee. It started at $100/year, is now $200, and will be $274 starting in 2028. I don't have data on what fraction of CA's gas & related taxes go to actually building and maintaining roads. (CA does divert money from the transportation fund, which is funded by one of the gas taxes, to "not road" transportation and road stuff for "not cars/trucks.")
- dzhiurgis 2y ago
  It's $7.3k USD for 100k miles in NZ... Same as 3.5 tonne diesel truck.
- _mlbt 2y ago
  Texas does something similar with EV registration fees. The first time fee is $400 and then it’s $200 a year after that.
thelastgallon 2y ago
We need to start taxing vehicles based on the damage they are responsible for. The 4th Power Law is a principle in road engineering that states that the damage a vehicle causes to a road surface is proportional to the fourth power of its axle load. This means that even small increases in axle load can cause exponentially greater damage to the road. A Prius causes about 50,000 times more damage than a bicycle. A truck causes 16 billion times more damage than a bicycle. A truck causes 31,000 times more damage than a Prius.
- okr 2y ago
  We built roads mainly for trucks. Because this infrastructure ensures, that we have food in the supermarkets, material on the construction sites and in worst case, tanks quickly in the areas needed. So if it was me, trucks can use the streets for free all day long and tax me for that, to build and maintain this infrastructure. But for private leisure like biking an extra pathway, no thanks, they can pay for that themselves. Its nice to have.
  - saurik 2y ago
    Those trucks are doing things for people, and different people cause different amounts of trucks. If you have some cool use case for a ton of trucks--as a consumer, buying a kind of product or service that causes trucks to go back and forth to satisfy your interests--you should bear more of the cost of maintaining the roads for those trucks than I do, or you get a tragedy of the commons where the cost of constantly rebuilding roads is thrown at everyone and no one is incentivized to lower their use of trucks.
    - BizarroLand 2y ago
      There are well over 300,000,000 million people in America, each needing food, clothing, and entertainment in order to be productive members of society. The sheer number of humans necessitates the existence of trucks. The fairytale alternative that some people spout where everyone walks or uses bicycles and roads last forever is perfect as long as almost everyone dies first. Either that or the world as we know it must be destroyed so that this fictional better one can take its place.
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
Presumably efficient ICE and hybrids have cost even more, given the US's sluggishness in adopting EVs and it being based on fuel sales.
johnsmth 2y ago
A lot of EVs have big 19" or 20" wheels, which get damaged easily on bad roads. I would think people who can afford a Lucid or whatever would also appreciate having surfaces to drive on that don't bend their rims. Just a small counter-vailing factor.
42772827 2y ago
This article is bullshit. The gas tax hasn’t kept pace with inflation anyway, so states just raid their general fund. There so few EVs on the road in comparison to ice cars that the difference is even more negligible.

Didn't read the article. Washington State is actively exploring taxing all drivers by mileage driven, self reported, to accommodate this shift.

SlightlyLeftPad 2y ago
Honor-system based taxes; Do they actually work?
- jfim 2y ago
  It could if they make it so that the tax is also applied based on the miles driven whenever the car changes ownership or is disposed of at the end of its life. Cheating on the self reported mileage would only defer the tax, not avoid it.
  - excalq 2y ago
    I forsee even more dead vehicles ending up in blackberry thickets if that happens.
floxy 2y ago
Washington State currently has a flat $225 in electric vehicle fees. https://dol.wa.gov/vehicles-and-boats/vehicles/vehicle-registration/calculate-vehicle-tab-fees https://dol.wa.gov/vehicles-and-boats/vehicles/vehicle-regis... ...currently broken out as two separate "Electric Car" fees at $100 and $50, and a "Transportation electrification fee" at $75.

DannyBee 2y ago

This is kinda true, but places blame in the wrong place. The TL;DR is that the stress caused by EV's being heavier is miniscule in practice on any road with any meaningful truck traffic. Whoever is heaviest should be paying most of the cost of creation and maintenance. Sometimes this would be "any EV" + ICE trucks. For most of the roads being talked about, it would be larger trucking companies. Why? Roads are weird - the stress caused by axle load is a fourth power law. So one 5 axle truck causes as much stress as 10643 cars. Don't confuse stress with damage, because as the trucking associations (correctly) point out , properly designed and maintained roads aren't damaged by loads they are meant to handle - environmental factors matter as much to deterioration as anything else. But building, maintaining, and updating the roads so they can handle the load and not be damaged does cost much more for these roads than other ones. This is because roads with a single 5 axle truck has to be built to handle as much load as 10000 cars in order to not be damaged. It also has to be maintained in that state. So it's a bit of a red herring to say the trucks don't cause damage - this is true on roads designed for them (and not true on roads not designed for them) - but doesn't change the fact that they are causing most of the cost to build and maintain roads that can support large trucks. In the end, because of 4th power law here, the cost should be apportioned to who you have to design and maintain for. Nobody should be freeloading, whether it's ICE trucks, EV's, or larger trucks. Anything else is just one group externalizing costs onto another. For examples, in states that just use "mileage driven" and charge everyone the same, most drivers are subsidizing truckers and larger vehicles, and because of the 4th power law, often to an insane degree. Maybe that makes sense, but i've not seen good arguments as to why.

DevelopingElk 2y ago
There are multiple factors. There is vehicle related degradation and also weather related. In areas with a freeze that cycle road maintenance has a flat cost component. Someone needs to pay for roads.
- DannyBee 2y ago
  I agree someone has to pay - but as I said, it should be in proportion to who is causing the cost. In places where it is totally flat, or even close to flat, cool, charge everyone (EV, non-EV). In places where it is not, charge everyone differently.
viraptor 2y ago
Good points, but I'd also add - ICE cars depend on continuous fuel delivery, done using heavy trucks. So this throws in another layer.

kelnos 2y ago

Assuming EVs are actually the cause, this seems like a problem with an obvious solution: make the vehicle registration fees for EVs higher.

anamax 2y ago

California has an EV-specific registration fee. It started at $100/year, is now $200, and will be $274 starting in 2028. I don't have data on what fraction of CA's gas & related taxes go to actually building and maintaining roads. (CA does divert money from the transportation fund, which is funded by one of the gas taxes, to "not road" transportation and road stuff for "not cars/trucks.")

dzhiurgis 2y ago
It's $7.3k USD for 100k miles in NZ... Same as 3.5 tonne diesel truck.
_mlbt 2y ago
Texas does something similar with EV registration fees. The first time fee is $400 and then it’s $200 a year after that.

thelastgallon 2y ago

We need to start taxing vehicles based on the damage they are responsible for. The 4th Power Law is a principle in road engineering that states that the damage a vehicle causes to a road surface is proportional to the fourth power of its axle load. This means that even small increases in axle load can cause exponentially greater damage to the road. A Prius causes about 50,000 times more damage than a bicycle. A truck causes 16 billion times more damage than a bicycle. A truck causes 31,000 times more damage than a Prius.

okr 2y ago
We built roads mainly for trucks. Because this infrastructure ensures, that we have food in the supermarkets, material on the construction sites and in worst case, tanks quickly in the areas needed. So if it was me, trucks can use the streets for free all day long and tax me for that, to build and maintain this infrastructure. But for private leisure like biking an extra pathway, no thanks, they can pay for that themselves. Its nice to have.
- saurik 2y ago
  Those trucks are doing things for people, and different people cause different amounts of trucks. If you have some cool use case for a ton of trucks--as a consumer, buying a kind of product or service that causes trucks to go back and forth to satisfy your interests--you should bear more of the cost of maintaining the roads for those trucks than I do, or you get a tragedy of the commons where the cost of constantly rebuilding roads is thrown at everyone and no one is incentivized to lower their use of trucks.
  - BizarroLand 2y ago
    There are well over 300,000,000 million people in America, each needing food, clothing, and entertainment in order to be productive members of society. The sheer number of humans necessitates the existence of trucks. The fairytale alternative that some people spout where everyone walks or uses bicycles and roads last forever is perfect as long as almost everyone dies first. Either that or the world as we know it must be destroyed so that this fictional better one can take its place.

ZeroGravitas 2y ago

Presumably efficient ICE and hybrids have cost even more, given the US's sluggishness in adopting EVs and it being based on fuel sales.

johnsmth 2y ago

A lot of EVs have big 19" or 20" wheels, which get damaged easily on bad roads. I would think people who can afford a Lucid or whatever would also appreciate having surfaces to drive on that don't bend their rims. Just a small counter-vailing factor.

42772827 2y ago

This article is bullshit. The gas tax hasn’t kept pace with inflation anyway, so states just raid their general fund. There so few EVs on the road in comparison to ice cars that the difference is even more negligible.