this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
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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.
I think they already grab your mileage via smog checks and shit. Like, take your car to the shop and they report your mileage to the semiinternational mileage bureau of car driving distance standards. Any discrepancies and they take away your key bones.
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.
People already wait way too long to replace tires due to their cost. We didn't need to increase that hazard.
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.
Weight is just the mechanism to tax cars in many countries. Whether its fair to exempt EVs from road taxes is a different story, and depends on the type of 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.
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.