More driving both increases the likelyhood of damages to vehicles or people, and makes this a useage-based fee - so while not perfect, it's the closest we can realistically get without becoming mired in PR mis-understandings or complications, technicalities, and enforcement difficulties.
EVs are also much harsher on roads because of their weight.
I’d have to drive an EV about 35% more miles each year to make it to break even on tax versus our 35 mpg ICE car. It’s no bargain, it’s punishment for driving an EV.
EVs are also much harsher on roads because of their weight.
My Hyundai Ioniq 5 weighs less than the most popular vehicle in the US: the F-150. I don’t see those getting special taxes.
In fact, within ICE vehicles, the gap between sedans/hatchbacks/compact crossovers and giant SUVs and trucks is larger, and yet for some reason we aren’t taxing drivers of Suburbans and F-150s accordingly.
If we applied this logic fairly we should be pushing people to right-size their vehicles regardless of fuel type.
But, there wouldn't be the opportunity for asking for political favors, so don't expect anyone who likes you having to beg to champion such a process.
Federal gas tax is generally used for new roads, not road maintenance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Trust_Fund
If you want an “honest framing”, raise the federal fuel tax to match inflation, then we’ll talk about EVs. Plain and simple, this is just a move to punish EV use.
> […] attempts […] to suspend the federal gas tax, without which […] would have halted efforts to repair and expand the Federal highway system.
(emphasis mine)
Did you have a specific quote you intended to point to to support your claim?
But it's annoying to see the US government find a new way to discourage one of the most clear cut ways to reduce fossil fuel usage. If things were fair, we would be taxing gas for its contribution to air pollution and climate change.
We should be doing everything we can to encourage EV adoption, but the current administration is interested in doing the exact opposite. They apparently found a way to do so which gets bipartisan support.
Sure, Detroit which is on life support from making shitty overpriced cars would cease to exist. But EVs would take over the US in just 5 years.
FWIW, the gas tax also only pays a fraction of the actual cost of maintaining roads.
You could argue urban drivers are currently subsidizing rural drivers because they travel fewer miles in a year.
My opinion is this should be up to each State, and that this is federal government overreach.
Though currently you don't need an MOT until a vehicle is 3 years old, so they'll to add something there.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
As an example:
A 2026 Honda Accord LX has a combined gas mileage around 32 mpg and a curb weight of 3,239 lbs.
See: https://automobiles.honda.com/accord-sedan/specs-features-tr...
A 2025 Ford F-150 XLT has a combined gas mileage around 20 mpg and a curb weight of 4,941 lbs.
See: https://www.edmunds.com/ford/f-150/2025/features-specs/
Keeping things simple and calculating the axle weight to the fourth powers of both vehicles, the F-150 causes 5.4x the road wear of the Honda Accord while using only 1.6x the gas.
The reason this doesn't matter so much, though, is that the types of trucks used for shipping goods, when loaded, cause on the order of 10^4 the road wear, dwarfing any differences between standard commuter vehicles, which is why commercial trucks have to stop at weigh stations.
How do you pay more taxes on EVs when you factor in gas taxes?
Huh? Simple math?
$MILES_PER_YEAR/$200 (EV tax in WA) vs. $GALLONS_USED * $0.18 in the ICE car. I pay more in taxes to run the EV in a year than I do for equivalent miles in a 35mpg ICE. IOW, if I drove the Scion xB all the time, I’d pay less tax.
For an EV I’d pay $258.90 extra to register.
My state must be factoring in average miles driven to come up with the $258 number instead of charging per mile driven.
So then tax based on weight if that's the differentiator of the damage done? I guess in combination with mileage would make most sense, and add in a scale based on net worth too to make it extra goodie.
[1] Commercial vehicle weight is strongly determined by the cargo load.
Where this new fee has issues is that it would charge EV owners roughly double the average amount paid by ICE owners in federal fuel tax, and wouldn't consider how much driving a given EV is actually doing.
For example if you replaced a typical 40 ft transit bus containing 60 passengers going from point A to point B with those same 60 passengers in 60 subcompact electric SUVs, such as Hyundai Kona SELs, the 60 cars going from A to B would do do about 1% of the road damage that the bus would.
This also leads to an interesting possibility. Suppose you had a large city where everyone was driving the ICE version of the Hyundai Kona SEL, and then they all switched to the electric version. The electric version is ~500 pounds heavier than the ICE version, and by the 4th power rule would cause about 70% more road damage than the ICE version.
However, gasoline use in that city would plummet, and so the number of miles driving by the gas tanker trucks that supply the gas stations would plummet to.
Those trucks are way way way heavier than cars. The reduction in road damage from those trucks driving less would in many cases outweigh the increase in damage from everyone switching to a car that weighs ~500 pounds more.
Electricity doesn't, and it's not very fair to just add those taxes.
I think they should just tax tires. It sounds easier to administer and if it was a natural tax it would alleviate the main weakness it seemed to have: That's you buy your tires in the state with the lowest tire tax.
Except of course it is: Americans externalizing costs to save a buck seems to have become endemic