Interesting points to me are the fact that this 130 fee is:
- more than what the average fuel consuming car pay (70-90)
- Is on top of what many people already pay in state taxes to drive their car
this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
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What about all the subsidies we pay on gas? Maybe get rid of those if you want some revenue?
This. Countries around the world could save SO much money if they stopped subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. But no, better increase the tax on the middle class...
This is climate change denial in action. Any normal country would incentivize people to switch to EVs, not the opposite.
its to shore up OPEC countries, the ME, and israel by extension all that sweet oil money going into pockets of politicians .
I pay over $250/year for that privilege in Washington state. The goal is to make up for the gasoline tax I don't pay - which is fair in principle, because gas tax is used to maintain the roads we all drive on. What's not fair is that it's a flat amount. I drive less than 6000 miles/year. The electric car flat fee is approximately the gas tax a Prius driver would pay to drive twice that far. So to drive an all-electric car I'm being taxed twice as much tax as if I drove a hybrid. Insane.
I hate to pull the "You Yanks still have it cheap" card, but I just did the math for my car, assuming 10,000 km (6k miles) annually and a generous 8 liters (29 mpg?) fuel consumption. At current gas prices (2€ per liter), that's slightly under 800 Euros per year that the state collects at the pump (gas tax, CO2 surcharge, VAT adding up to at least half the price of gas). In addition, 135 € per year flat tax to have the car registered.
That said, the idea that you have to pay a penalty tax for driving a EV while the brodozers don't is, well... idiotic.
One thing not included in either your calculations or the other person's, is we also subsidized the oil industry. So even if you don't drive at all your still paying tax for money that ends up being for oil companies and roads.
they want you trapped in the fossil fuel death spiral
its like the coal thing in west virginia they held on to it till thier last dying breath, except its now country wide but with OIL.
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Sam Graves, Federal Congress Republican of Missouri, Wants You To Pay $130 A Year Just To Drive An Electric Car
FTFY
But is $130 actually fair?
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.
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.
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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.
Playing devils advocate the average weight of an ev is roughly a 1000lbs more than an equivalent ice car.
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.
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People could just buy EV SUVs and Pickup trucks so the degrading road infrastructure would be less of an issue.
Or they could order doordash once less a month and put that money towards the common good.
Sounds good… who do I pay $130/year to to get to drive an EV?
Trump :(
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