this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
229 points (97.1% liked)
Technology
84796 readers
3607 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Well, a flat fee doesn't take into account vehicle weight or annual mileage, which the gas tax more-or-less does. And the road maintenance cost is a function of those two things. A flat fee would penalize drivers of infrequently-driven small vehicles.
But...I suppose that gathering that data would also add some privacy concerns and costs, like the government needing to record how many miles your vehicle has traveled in a year.
EDIT: The really obnoxious thing is that everyone else is grabbing movement data on vehicles to make money off. Automakers via integrated cell radios. ALPR network operators. I assume that charging station operators do too
fast DC connections like NACS transmit the vehicle's VIN, and I'd be very surprised if charging companies aren't monetizing that data.
You could tax tires, it avoids all the tracking while still distributing road maintenance costs based off actual use of the roads.
People already wait way too long to replace tires due to their cost. We didn't need to increase that hazard.
That's an interesting thought.
thinks
Tax revenue would be less-frequent, and there might be potential to create a misincentive to encourage people to unsafely drive on threadbare tires longer than they otherwise would. But I could see that being done.
Include tire checks with thread depth minimums in the annual or semiannual registration renewal.
Seems like a basic safety precaution too. Getting bad tires off the road means less accidents.
All this sounds good in theory, but I guess fuck me if I get a puncture. Buy a tire and because you'll often need two for even wear I get to pay the equivalent of gas tax for 50k miles.
Prorate the tax based on used tread? If you only burned through 10% of the tire before replacing it - pay 10% of the tax.
Personally more of a fan of a pay per mile system but this is actually a really cool sounding alternative.
Or ... we could just not tax electric vehicles, and call that a subsidy to encourage the more environmentally friendly option.
If, at some future point, electric vehicle adoption becomes so widespread that it becomes difficult to provide road maintenance because gas taxes aren't being paid anymore, then you can find a different funding source for it. Maybe just fund it out of the ordinary general tax fund. Or even go really crazy and raise taxes on billionaires by two hundredths of a percent.
It is always far easier to accept a new change if it is combined with a group of larger changes, than to try and implement a new change on it's own.
If this type of tax had been implemented right from the start when modern EVs came on the market it would simply be a small part of the calculation of owning an EV.
Waiting until now, and you get this kind of response, waiting further will not improve the public opinion.
Damage to the road scales with axle load using a fourth power. Yes a fourth power. So an average truck does roughly 3000x more damage to road surfaces than an average EV.
Yet, weather influences account for the majority of road wear, so the weight of cars really does not matter at all.
I'm aware that vehicle weight is the mechanism to tax cars in many countries, but within groups this makes little sense if it is to compensate for road wear. Whether its fair to exempt EVs from road taxes is a different story, and depends on other externalities and the type of travel behaviour a government wants to promote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
Playing devils advocate the average weight of an ev is roughly a 1000lbs more than an equivalent ice car.
My Bolt EV weighs like 3600 pounds, about 400 pounds more than my old ICE Honda Accord. Maybe we should tax vehicles based on manufacturer spec curb weight. That might push demand for smaller, lighter, more efficient cars.
I genuinely agree with this. It would help curb the push for monster trucks with less veiw than abram tanks.
Only in the US where people demand stupid battery packs because of range anxiety because they can't do math.
The weight of an average truck is roughly 80.000lbs more. Now add a power of 4 to that.
Commercial vehicle taxes are already scaled by weight and milage.
This is one of the reasons that causes me to pause whenever I've considered purchasing one. My state also has a yearly fee.
I work from home and don't drive to justify these fees so I just keep my long ago paid off vehicle well maintained for a fraction of the cost of a car payment.