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Trump Administration Plans to Gut Clean Car Rules
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2026
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Climate
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Which is the thing people don't get about higher registration fees on electric vehicles and why they may be necessary (sort of). Tax on fuel paid at the pump funds roads, but since EVs aren't buying fuel and weigh as much or more they should probably pay something towards road maintenance. Assuming keep the current funding model, which I'm not convinced is the best model.
I'm fairly pro EV and most taxes like fuel tax have always felt a little regressive even if I'm able to pay for it just fine. I don't know what the actual answer is, but it does seem like the short fall could likely be generated by better taxing wealthy corporations and improving public transportation.
It seems to me that registration should be the point where a vehicle owner has to pay for public road usage. Some vehicles that need gas/diesel aren't registered for public road usage (e.g. farm equipment), and some vehicles which don't need gas/diesel are registered for public road usage (e.g. EVs). Therefore gas taxes are misaligned, but registration is by definition aligned with public road usage.
The only thing you lose out on is the fuel economy heuristic that bigger/heavier vehicles cost more to fuel (there's some physics to back it up: heavier vehicles take more absolute energy to accelerate up to a given speed, and an ICE only converts energy one way -- potential to kinetic -- so it's all eventually lost to heat via the brakes), therefore they'll pay more in taxes. But adding any kind of electrification into the mix (BEV, PHEV, or mild HEV) invalidates the physics behind the heuristic (electric motors can recover kinetic energy), thus the gas tax is supremely irrelevant and we instead need a different mechanism for funding roadways.
I could see a scenario where if we get to a point where a super majority of vehicles on the roadways are electric then the fuel tax is shifted over to a tax on electricity which does address some of the usage issues with a registration based tax. It also helps with location of usage a little more too since just because the vehicle was registered in one state doesn't mean it was used the most in that state.
I'm well aware we have the technology to determine exactly where and how much every vehicle is being used, but I'm not terribly interested in giving many, if any, of the current governments of the world that ability.
Bear with my ignorance, but what are the issues you see with registration-based usage taxes?
Electric usage tax has the same problem as a gas tax in that it's decoupled from actual public road usage.
edit: hit "send" before actually done writing... Whoops.
Are you registering miles per year on roads as well?
Why would someone who drives 10 miles a day past the same massive registration cost as someone who drives 100 or 500 miles per day?
That's why it's tied to gas atm. The higher usage the more you pay.
Sorry, I missed the point where registration includes odometer readings. Sure, it's possible that someone could be driving 10k miles off-road and 100 miles on-road, thereby paying for more than they're using, but it seems quite niche and less complicated a trade-off (and much less tied to fossil fuels) than gas tax.
You said it should be tied to registration. But it's tied to gas because that reflects miles/usage and wear better
Did you read anything I wrote about electrification? The moment you add a battery it stops reflecting usage.
How will registration only be fair to those who don't drive much and still make those who drive constantly/ for work pay more?