Politico
These backward-ass clowns are going to be the bane of this world.
In my ideal world, we’d have a full carbon tax as well as a vehicle weight tax, and we’d use part of that to fund more electrified public transit (e.g., trains, trams, trolleybuses) and bike infrastructure. Plus we need to actually legalize dense, walkable urbanism. The zoning codes and parking minimums in North America make it literally illegal to build anything dense, walkable, and transit-oriented across almost all the urban land, resulting in miles and miles of government-mandated sprawl.
The future of sustainable urban is truly in public transit and micromobility – car dependency just doesn’t make any sense in cities, as no amount of electric cars can make up for the harm caused by sprawling, car-dependent land use. Electric cars are obviously less bad than ICE cars, but just swapping out ICE cars for electric is not actually financially, socially, or environmentally sustainable.
We should still have electric cars for the use cases (e.g., rural areas) for which you truly do need them, but the vehicle weight arms race (especially for trucks and SUVs) is getting out of control and we need the electric cars we would still have to be much smaller and lighter like this. Fewer electric hummers, more electric kei trucks, more electric trains, more electric bikes.
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Charge road use taxes by vehicle weight. Yes, electric cars are heavy, but so is the average American vehicle, because people seem to love their enormous trucks. If you have a Model 3 or a roadster, it’s actually lighter than the average.
According to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average weight of a car is around 4094 pounds. A small car weighs around 2600 pounds, while a large car weighs around 4400 pounds.
- Tesla Model X Plaid - 5,390 pounds
- Tesla Model X Standard Range - 5,185 pounds
- Tesla Model S Plaid - 4,766 pounds
- Tesla Model S Long Range - 4,561 pounds
- Tesla Model Y Long Range & Performance - 4,416 pounds
- Tesla Model 3 Long Range & Performance - 4,065 pounds
- Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Plus - 3,582 pounds
- Tesla Roadster - 2,723 pounds
With safety regulations, I thought smaller cars are around 2800-3000lbs now. A 7 year old (2016) Mazda 3 (compact car) is showing as 2900lbs. When you say small are you talking like the sub compact cars? Just trying to get an idea of what small means in this instance.
You’ve got it right, but let me expand with the power of mathematical modelling. The average vehicle is, for the last 20 years or so, pegged at 4000 lbs when doing road damage calculations. A Chevy bolt EV is around 3800 lbs, or smaller than average, while Tesla vehicles are like you said. The fourth power law is what is used to estimate road damage, and the take away point from that is that all vehicles in and around that 4000 lb range and nothing, notta, moot, compared to large trucks and shipping rigs.
As an example. Take the bolt EV at 3800 lbs, the F150 at 4200 lbs, and the F350 at 6764 lbs.
The bolt and f150 would have 1900lbs and 2100lbs per axle respectively. Applying the fourth power rule the F150 does (2100/1900)^4= 1.49 times the damage of a Bolt EV. Meanwhile the F350 does , (3382/1900)^4 = 10 times the road damage.
So then, is it true that the F150 and F350 will be made to pay 1.5 and 10 times the registration and fuel taxes of an EV like the Bolt? I have not yet seen this to be true. Now imagine how much damage a delivery van, or large shipping vehicle does.
The other part of this is environmental damage, are these states going to find a way to charge for carbon emissions proportionally from the gas vehicles? Of course not.
In Canada anyway fuel taxes go into general revenue, not to roads, that’s a whole different line of argument.
It shouldn’t be double but we all need to pay for the roads.
only double would be a welcome change in the state of Ohio.
- Car cost = $31/year
- Truck (non commercial)=$46/year to $80/year
- Hybrid car = $131/year
- EV car = $231 year
AFAIK even the heaviest tesla car has basically nothing on what a semi does to a road.
I mean yeah, obviously, but it isn’t a particularly useful comparison since the two aren’t really alternatives to each other.
That would have to be one huge payment, though. I can only think of a few cases in my entire life that I’ve bought a tire.
Seems better to me that they collect the taxes from everyone from the income tax and/or business taxes. Everyone uses the roads, even if they don’t have a car.
They could just take the money from fossil fuel subsidies. This way, you don’t give people a new reason to not get an EV and we reduce tax revenue used to support the fossil fuel industry.
I live in one of these states that charges $100 for hybrids annually. Annoying as hell but I save so much on gas that it’s worth it. I get the argument that gas taxes pay for road maintenance, but this whole thing isn’t going to be sustainable in the long run.
The taxes should probably be based on some combination of usage and gross vehicle weight. People driving more with heavy vehicles ought to pay a larger share of road maintenance. A gas tax somewhat handles this since people with larger vehicles who drive more will use more gas.
But the gas taxes don’t even cover all of the money spent on maintaining/upgrading the roads. Roads are very expensive especially when you have these large highway interchange projects. We should really be trying to get people away from driving cars and onto transit, biking, walking etc. as much as possible
But the gas taxes don’t even cover all of the money spent on maintaining/upgrading the roads
This is especially true where I live, because our state police are getting money from the DOT to help police small towns who can’t afford their own.
I imagine they’ll start caring more about road maintenance when they’re so bad nobody can drive fast enough to get a speeding ticket.
Can we just invest in public transit while taxing the fuck out of personal vehicles as well as cease subsiding oil, ffs?
How about fuck off and spend your own money on shitty transit instead of wasting taxpayer money on it while restricting freedom?
That wouldn’t work in the vast majority of the US, which is very spread out.
Great, but punishing everyone who doesn’t live in a metro by taxing personal vehicles out of existence would be assinine.
Public transit isn’t feasible is many rural areas. I know you don’t like it, but that’s reality. Sending a bus 20 miles down a road in the hopes that one of 4 people on it want to ride on the bus just doesn’t make sense.
Humans can ruin anything
I don’t know how anyone can genuinely believe that Republicans are for small government and say the competition is good when they’re using government to stifle competition.
