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One thing to note is that car infrastructure maintenance (e.g. upkeeping roads and bridges) is often paid for in substantial part through a gas tax. Electric cars don’t pay the gas tax, so they are essentially freeloading. In the future, this may change, but this is one reason why EVs are currently cheaper than ICEs.
Isn’t most (non-environmental) road damage done by commercial trucks?
Maybe paying for roads by taxing fuel was always going to be a losing battle since mpg requirements have been trending upwards for decades.
Large trucks (semi-truck, big-rig, 18-wheeler, etc.) cause around 200,000 times the damage to roads per distance driven than cars.
Even accounting for the lower number of trucks than cars, in Australia trucks cause around 50,000 times more damage to roads per year than cars.
In Australia, commercial trucks pay less fuel excise per litre than cars.
There is obviously a LOT of car infrastructure that is not used by commercial trucks: residential streets and parking lots account for most road surface area. There are also many other externalities besides maintenance like pollution and accidents. By not properly taxing distance driven, we are essentially subsidizing car use.
Honest question: are you a bot? 'cause you sound like one
Honest answer: no. What about me sounds like a bot? Because I use jargon?
My state hits you with a tax you can pay per mile or once a year with registration, and was fairly expensive, so not really true here.
That sounds sensible. Car use is heavily subsidized, so someone is paying for those miles. It makes sense that a greater proportion of that cost falls on the driver.
At least in Georgia, I actually pay more in "gas tax" by owning an EV because I just don't drive enough but the yearly cost doesn't reflect miles driven
Yeah you’re subsidizing other people to drive their car more, and you’re being incentivized to drive more.
I pay for that infrastructure when I register my car. As in, I pay easy more than an ICE car does. Way more. There is no freeloading going on. It is just a propaganda point used by oil interests to discourage people from adopting evs. The freeloaders you are looking for are the corporate interests who are using my lungs to clear the poisons they are spilling into the air with their diesel engines. Those are the freeloaders you are looking for. Protip: you can spot the freeloaders in a crowd real easy. They are the ones pointing their fingers and yelling "freeloaders". Projection is a powerful tool
Oh please, your modest increase in registration fees do not cover all the externalities of cars. Cars still enjoy TONS of subsidies, including free parking, free highways, etc. In fact, 60% of the surface areas of most cities in NA are devoted to cars.
It’s hilarious that you think you’re fighting “Big Corporate Lobbying” by defending EVs. I don’t know where you get that I’m in favor of ICEs. I am against car dependence entirely. You’re being brainwashed into thinking environmentalism is just about buying another expensive product instead of fighting the car lobby entirely.
In Australia, roads are paid for out of the general tax pool, and from a proportion of the registration cost. Fuel excise goes into the general tax pool and doesn't directly fund roads.
This hasn't stopped states from trying to implement a distance based tax on electric and low emission vehicles.
Victoria introduced one under the guise of needing extra money to pay for roads. It was a state-collected tax. The federal government collects fuel excise, so the state wasn't losing funding from electric car owners. The new tax collected didn't even go toward roads.
There were numerous other critical issues with this tax, but it's still running.
Distance based taxes are economically better because they internalize the externalities of driving. That is, driving more benefits the driver but is paid for by the general tax pool. This means people are encouraged to drive more than they should because the true costs are borne by society as a whole (including non-drivers) and not the individual driving.