188
Countries Eye Weight Tax To Counter Public Safety Threat Of Extremely Heavy, Large EVs
(www.techdirt.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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Interesting what I don't see in this article. There's a lot of different drivers for costs of car infrastructure maintenance. But one of the most important drivers is weight. It causes more stress on the road surface and decreases that lifespan.
I agree with the article, just weird that they left out the most compelling argument for a weight tax on ALL vehicles.
Something important to consider with regards to weight and road damage, damage is proportional to weight to the fourth power. A little extra weight means a lot more wear. This is also why we should be shipping most things by train, as trucks are absolutely annihilating the roads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
Yeah, and it comes up a lot when people say EVs aren't paying their fair share and should have increased registration costs. The biggest hit on road maintenance is big trucks, and it's not even close. We are all subsidizing this industry.
Diesel cars are 50kg heavier than EVs in general (maybe I can find the study again) and they've increased the most since 2012 in weight gained
Plus they always give as an example, that e-hummer that weighs 9,000 lbs. that just shouldn’t exist. Meanwhile most EVs are 1/3 that weight
It's 9000 pounds and is faster than 90s supercars. It's complete lunacy, and I'm actually quite scared of how much more dangerous it's going to make driving.
Yep. No one wants ro talk about a real weight tax, because if they charged trucks their proportional share, shipping costs would go through the roof.
But what if we moved them onto a separate road, made of metal?
Thay would be crazy, they would all be running at different intervals. You would need some system to link all the cars together, with a singular engine. An Onomotive or something like that, we can figure out the name later.
A bicycle can't move without someone sitting on it pedaling, so I think it's fair to include the weight of the rider.
They should also raise the gas tax so it's cheaper to own an EV.
Make evs expensive, sure, but make gas more expensive.
Can we instead remove oil subsidies?
Same thing in the end.
... but why not both?
Because it's easier to sell ending oil subsidies rather than raising gas taxes. Ending corporate subsidies has broad support among Americans.
I was meaning it as the meme "porque no los dos" but yeah I get it.
That's definitely true. It's also a concern for a lot of infrastructure like parking garages and bridges.
I suspect it's left out because the site focuses on tech, but I've seen a few articles looking at that this year. I think some states already do licenses based on weight, though arguably it's not enough.
Apparently, there's some loopholes that manufacturer's are using to justify increasing weights (eg. this ), and a similar taxbreak from some recent legislation for cars over 6k lbs.
You bring the tax in for EVs first, and conservatives will either not care or even cheer for it. A new tax on woke cars!
Then after the next election you quietly extend it to all vehicles.
A bunch of those conservative states use large pickups as grocery-getters. If the weight tax hits them you’d better believe the whine will start quickly.
But not large electric pickups
Heck no. Screeching turbos and foghorn exhaust tips. Gotta make sure you everyone turns to look at your 36” lift and giant knobby tires.
I mean, there basically is, but it's usually just factored it into something like gas taxes instead of having a specific line item for it. Since EVs don't pay that tax, there needs to be a separate one somewhere.
In that US? Gasoline taxes don't even cover the cost of cleaning up emissions, let alone paving the roads. It's subsidized by other tax revenue.
The Dutch have had weight based roax tax for a long while: link in Dutch It just does not apply to EVs.