EV owners could soon pay $250 annual tax to use US roads?

[cadblu]

Congress is now considering levying a $250 yearly tax on EV owners to use US roadways. The current U.S. surface transportation law is set to expire on September 30, 2026. And this would be in addition to higher state registration fees on electric vehicles.

“We would like to get money from EVs" according to the chair of the House Transportation committee. EV's have been exempt from federal fuel taxes. Gas-powered vehicles pay about $88 per year in federal fuel taxes.

My take, this is another cash grab in the works after losing the $7500 federal incentive earlier this year.

Full article here: EV Road Use Tax

 

[RedJoker]

In my state, it's already $200. This is on top of that causing a huge cost to EV drivers over ICE. I don't mind paying my share but come on....

 

[bloo]

If the HTC want to be fair about it (they don't), we should get charged the average rate of 88 bucks. Those of us on the grid already pay taxes on electricity, FFS.

Who's the tax and spend party now ?

 

[bloo]

In my state, it's already $200. I wonder if these are cumulative charges.

$250 in mine.

 

[GaRailroader]

I think in Georgia it is $230ish, up from $210ish when I moved here in 2020. I think it might be better to do it at the federal level rather than state level. As I understand it, 0% of the monies collected in Georgia are going to road upkeep. Since the gas tax is not applicable to all drivers may be it would be prudent to repeal gas taxes and let everyone pay this federal fee.

 

[E90400K]

The Feds paying in $7.5B for EV charging infrastructure needs to come from some sort of tax levied on the citizens that use it. Perhaps that explains the delta between ICEV Federal fuel taxes and a proposed EV use tax at the Federal level.

 

[KevinRS]

I can understand a fee that is equivalent to the average driver's gas taxes, in order to pay for road maintenance, even better if it's done by miles driven, and heavily weighted by vehicle weight. But if it's 284% of the average?
Gas taxes are charged both federally and by the state, in theory so both federally and state maintained roads are paid for by the seperate gas taxes, so a federal tax wouldn't replace the state ones.
A lot of the state taxes seem to actually be at least close to in line with covering the state gas tax revenue lost. Those over 200, not so much. Another 250 from federal every year seems like it's just getting punitive, especially when you consider the $100 for hybrids, that would be paying that on top of gas tax, just for being more efficient.
That 7.5 billion signed back in 2022 is spread out over years, a big part of it hasn't been paid out afaik. About 4 million EVs on the road so far, would be a billion dollars a year. Supposedly it's for road maintenance, but at a rate that high?

 

[beatle]

If the tax were based on weight, impact, and mileage, motorcycles would effectively be tax free, and it would cost $600k in tax alone to drive an 80k load across the country - one time! The impact on the road is exponential based on vehicle weight. Here's just how crazy the tax structure would look like if it were 100% "fair" to the amount of wear put on the road:

Vehicle	Current Tax Paid (Per Mile)	Tax Per Mile (If Calculated by Impact)	The Reality (Who subsidizes whom?)
Motorcycle (800 lbs)	$0.0116 (~1.1 cents)	$0.00003 (~0.003 cents)	Overpays by ~$0.011 per mile. Motorcyclists heavily subsidize the roads.
Typical Car (4,000 lbs)	$0.0193 (~1.9 cents)	$0.0193 (~1.9 cents)	Baseline. Passenger cars are the benchmark we are measuring against.
EV Truck (6,500 lbs)	$0.0000 (0 cents)	$0.1080 (10.8 cents)	Underpays by ~$0.108 per mile. Bypasses the gas tax but causes heavy wear.
Semi-Truck (80,000 lbs)	$0.1099 (~11 cents)	$214.00	Underpays by ~$213.89 per mile. The sheer volume of passenger cars covers this massive shortfall.

I know nobody is actually proposing this idea, but it does show how much we effectively subsidize trucking by paying for their impact to the roads. Clearly anything moved by truck would otherwise become prohibitively expensive under this model. Trucks also very rarely travel on many secondary streets for residential areas, but there are a lot of those roads which complicates things further.

Tax structures can be pretty complicated as the government may use them to encourage/discourage certain things, and shift tax burdens around, but I do think that the fuel tax per gallon needs to be revamped. It hasn't been raised to match inflation since 1993, and vehicles have become a lot more fuel efficient. This doesn't even take into account that the revenue collected from fuel tax doesn't even cover half of what it takes to build and maintain all the roads across the country - that's a quarter trillion $$$ a year.

But yeah, I also pay a highway use fee "penalty" for driving an EV, and I still grimace every time I renew my registration.

 

[cadblu]

But yeah, I also pay a highway use fee "penalty" for driving an EV, and I still grimace every time I renew my registration.

Here's another "penalty" for certain EV owners. I consider it a penalty because it was a privilege which was taken away. NY State recently passed legislation to ban EVs from HOV lanes as the Clean Pass program was abruptly ended. So now I need to sit in traffic like everyone else with my nonpolluting car.

 

[beatle]

They did the same thing on the northern VA HOV lanes back in 2014 for EVs/hybrids. You previously used to be able to take the HOV lanes even with no passengers. TBH though it is way too congested in this area to just allow hybrids/EVs ride solo, especially with as prevalent as they are nowadays. The strange motorcycle exemption still applies, however. I took advantage of that for over 3 years. It generally felt safer with less traffic, though ironically my big crash came on the HOV lanes while riding to work - as the result of a wild construction barrel base that hit me.