Comment by pkulak 8 days ago
The new budget that passed the house has registration fees on EVs that will only match gas cars if you drive well over 25,000 miles a year. Maybe "outlaw" was hyperbolic, but you tax what you want less of. I would imagine that these taxes will only increase. Especially compared to the _incentives_ offered in every other country.
We don't "outlaw" cigarettes, for example, but I would call the current taxes on them a "near" outlaw.
My point is that there's no reason to tax them more than gas cars. Gas cars create FAR more negative externalities. I'm not saying they shouldn't be taxed at all; sorry if you got that impression.
EVs tend to weigh more and cause a higher degree of microplastic emission and road wear.
HN is usually happy to remind everyone that the damage a vehicle causes to a road scales with the fourth power of its weight. A Tesla model 3 is about triple the wear on the road surface compared to a Toyota Camry.
Are they being taxed more? Or is it that with gas cars, most of the tax is paid outside of registration, when they're refueled, whereas EVs only pay the taxes at registration time, and thus end up paying their share up front instead of over time?
ICEs aren't taxed to punish their externalities, but to finance roads.
Suffice it to say that if all cars magically became EVs something in the tax code would have to change to pay for road maintence.
If you're gathering the resources and you still have bad roads, then that's a problem of Virginians inability to govern well.
Which, as an American largely being governed by Virginians, I cant say Im surprised.
You tax to finance government services. EV use roads but don't pay fuel taxes.
We can debate how much EVs should be taxed, but they're using the bloody roads, aren't they?