Texas bill that introduces $200 fee on EVs to fund roads just passed

[OVERKILL]

There's no way to set a fee of $X amount and make it work fairly. With the gas tax the guy driving 500 miles a month in his Corolla doesn't pay the same as the guy driving 4000 miles a month in his Corolla. So whatever they do for EVs should also adjust based on miles driven.

Yeah, it should be charged per kWh, which is the equivalent of gallons/litres we use for gasoline. The cars track how many kWh they use and the charge interface includes communication which is usually bidirectional, smart meters would record the kWh from the vehicle charging and public charging would automatically include the fee. So, if you charge at home, it's on your electricity bill, if you public charge, it's part of what you pay.

Like with gas, this avoids having to track the # of miles, it's tied to efficiency, which naturally includes weight, which means wear and tear on the roads. A heavier car will consume more power in use; use more kWh per drive cycle, resulting in more tax being collected and the inverse for lighter cars.

 

[LDB]

The tractor trailer does pay significantly more though, because it uses considerably more fuel, which means it pays more tax.

And at a higher rate than the gasoline tax as well. It is based on miles driven in each jurisdiction, state in this case, so records must be kept of miles driven in each state. It ranges from a low of 18 cents in Mississippi to a high of 85 cents in (surprise to no one) California. And before anyone gets excited that hey, 18 cents is lower than the 20 cents I'm paying in Texas or whatever, that's not per gallon, that's per mile driven. So when the truck delivers goods to Anywhere, California they pay 85 cents per mile in fuel taxes to California for the privilege of driving there.

 

[4WD]

The tractor trailer does pay significantly more though, because it uses considerably more fuel, which means it pays more tax.

Yep - Lots of quartz rock dug here …
I once stood in line behind a lady paying yearly fees for their gravel hauling fleet - it’s a whole new ball game what big rigs/trailers pay …
Now, if we could just get a windshield replacement fund

 

[4WD]

Texas legislature just passed the bill. $200 annual fee on all EVs to fund road construction and maintenance. Goes into effect on Sep 1, 2023 if the governor signs it and I'm sure he will. This has been long overdue in some form in order to level the playing field with with ICE car owners who contribute via hefty gas taxes. The only question is how high the fee should be. Some argue that $200 is excessive based on avg EV miles driven.

Full disclosure: I own 3 ICE cars and have had Tesla Cybertruck on order since 2019. On one hand, I don't like the prospect of paying the annual fee but at the same time, EV owners must contribute to road maintenance in some way. Roads don't fund themselves. I've been considering canceling my Cybertruck order for some time (empty promises, etc), this is another incentive to do it.

Thoughts?

Seems like a starting place since it would be difficult for authorities to track power consumption - mileage and so on … IMO, bureaucracy would eat up much of the $200 …

We see a tremendous amount of road construction and maintenance - improvements in many cases …

 

[97prizm]

Texas legislature just passed the bill. $200 annual fee on all EVs to fund road construction and maintenance. Goes into effect on Sep 1, 2023 if the governor signs it and I'm sure he will. This has been long overdue in some form in order to level the playing field with with ICE car owners who contribute via hefty gas taxes. The only question is how high the fee should be. Some argue that $200 is excessive based on avg EV miles driven.

Full disclosure: I own 3 ICE cars and have had Tesla Cybertruck on order since 2019. On one hand, I don't like the prospect of paying the annual fee but at the same time, EV owners must contribute to road maintenance in some way. Roads don't fund themselves. I've been considering canceling my Cybertruck order for some time (empty promises, etc), this is another incentive to do it.

Thoughts?

It's a start, but isn't really a great solution. A flat fee won't be helpful if the EV owner drives alot. They need something similar to the gas tax where so many cents per kilowatt hour.

 

[MSCH]

The tractor trailer does pay significantly more though, because it uses considerably more fuel, which means it pays more tax.

depends on where they buy fuel... when my son was driving for CFI and going cross country alot, they would have all his fuel stops mapped out for him to minimize costs. of course a tractor trailer causes considerably more wear to a roadway than what it pays per mile for fuel, so you got that too... but basically a bicycle causes zero..

Quote :
Considering that the truck has eight axles and the sedan has two, the relative damage caused by the entire semitruck would be 625 x (8/2) -- 2,500 times that of the sedan.

“The damage due to cars, for practical purposes, when we are designing pavements, is basically zero. It’s not actually zero, but it’s so much smaller -- orders of magnitude smaller -- that we don’t even bother with them,” said Karim Chatti, a civil engineer from Michigan State University in East Lansing. https://www.insidescience.org/news/...g that the truck has,times that of the sedan.

 

[mrnkc130]

They should eliminate all state taxes on gasoline too and just charge (no pun intended) an annual fee on everyone based on vehicle weight.

That would be nice, they do charge more per weight already though already, one of the reasons i got rid of my tandem axle dump truck and got a dump trailer instead, even with farm tags at that weight it was $400 plus (and this was 10yrs ago) for the annual registration vs $6 per year for my dump trailer (with tandem dual 12k axles pulled behind my Ram 4500 also farm tagged at about $120 per year) I/m sure non farm tagged at those weights is substantially more.

Just a regular car is now around $75 per year registration and $40 for inspection ($14 if non emissions county, which translates to if your check engine light is on you fail vs only blinkers wipers tire tread safety inspection)

Now trailers are also by weight but a larger tandem axle trailer is the same price (around $50) as a jet ski trailer etc which is why my jetski trailer tags have been out for 7 years now!

I think our texas roads (as far as condition are quite good (compared to other states like Colorado, Louisiana and many other ive traveled to as well as all over the world) but the problem now is the volume of traffic, 20 yrs ago it was no problem, now that everyone has moved to Texas the traffic is horrible, they put a housing development in that is serviced by the same 2 lane farm to market road that was there 25 years ago but now 10,000 people use it. They eventually widen and improve but it take an inordinate amount of time before they start and then also the actual construction. Property taxes are where they get you here (the school tax portion), a nicer house is in the range of $1,000 per month in taxes (say 500-600k house)

 

[edyvw]

It was inevitable.
Just to remind everyone that climate of each state has a lot to do with conditions of roads. In TX it is MUCH easier and cheaper to maintain roads than CO or MI.

 

[4strokes]

lol you're seriously not comparing Michigan roads to Texas. Michigan a high tax state has roads that are third world, mean while Texas with no state income tax has much better roads. better hurry i hear Whitmer is having a conference on CNN.

Apples and oranges Texas with no freeze-thaw cycle has it pretty easy to maintain its roads.

 

[brianl703]

In TX it is MUCH easier and cheaper to maintain roads than CO or MI.

They seem to use a lot of concrete in TX, even parking lots are often paved in concrete there.

By way of comparison, VA uses very little concrete. I had read that VDOT doesn't like to use concrete because they've had bad experiences with it.

Perhaps VDOT ought to ask TxDOT how to make concrete work, or another of the other state DOTs that regularly use concrete.

(I can't say that VDOT's asphalt paving jobs are that great, either--common thing to see is chunks of the top layer coming off and forming a pothole).

 

[edyvw]

They seem to use a lot of concrete in TX, even parking lots are often paved in concrete there.

By way of comparison, VA uses very little concrete. I had read that VDOT doesn't like to use concrete because they've had bad experiences with it.

Perhaps VDOT ought to ask TxDOT how to make concrete work, or another of the other state DOTs that regularly use concrete.

(I can't say that VDOT's asphalt paving jobs are that great, either--common thing to see is chunks of the top layer coming off and forming a pothole).

Climate of each state plays major role. Temperature swings (biggest contributor to cracking if temperature swing means freezing), humidity, acidity of rain etc. You can have one surface working in in TX weather and another being ice skating ring.

 

[edyvw]

Apples and oranges Texas with no freeze-thaw cycle has it pretty easy to maintain its roads.

That part people don’t bother to understand. In CO it is even worse bcs. altitude and having freezing temperatures at night most of the year. Also, materials don’t do well above 10,000ft.

 

[alarmguy]

...

I think our texas roads (as far as condition are quite good (compared to other states like Colorado, Louisiana and many other ive traveled to as well as all over the world) but the problem now is the volume of traffic, 20 yrs ago it was no problem, now that everyone has moved to Texas the traffic is horrible, they put a housing development in that is serviced by the same 2 lane farm to market road that was there 25 years ago but now 10,000 people use it.

Yeah, much of the south is like this now. We just moved from an area of South Carolina that, 15 years ago was like moving into the country (compared to where we came from in NY)
Now, with a massive increase in population the roads are still the same! I feel like I am back on Long Island, NY

Well 15 years later, kids grown, off on their own, doing well (thank god) and we just moved from the Lake Murray area of SC to the Coastal area of NC. It's ALMOST a throwback to when we first moved south 15 years ago. But this area is being developed like crazy too. still very manageable for now. We are not far from North Myrtle Beach in SC.

We both know why our southern areas are growing like crazy and where the people are moving from, no politics in here but one just has to look at the US census data and ... well, again, no politics.

 

[brianl703]

Climate of each state plays major role. Temperature swings (biggest contributor to cracking if temperature swing means freezing), humidity, acidity of rain etc. You can have one surface working in in TX weather and another being ice skating ring.

In Virginia I think the problem, at least with the 2-lane roads, is not so much the climate (well, it rains here) as it is the poor drainage. It's common to have ditches right next to the pavement and it's common for them to overflow onto the pavement. Hitting a puddle of standing water in the road at 45MPH can be quite exciting....

The poor drainage contributes to pavement deterioration. I think at some point it maybe cheaper to fix the drainage than to keep fixing the asphalt that prematurely fails.

 

[alarmguy]

They seem to use a lot of concrete in TX, even parking lots are often paved in concrete there.

By way of comparison, VA uses very little concrete. I had read that VDOT doesn't like to use concrete because they've had bad experiences with it.

Perhaps VDOT ought to ask TxDOT how to make concrete work, or another of the other state DOTs that regularly use concrete.

(I can't say that VDOT's asphalt paving jobs are that great, either--common thing to see is chunks of the top layer coming off and forming a pothole).

I think concrete is more stable in very hot climates vs asphalt which gets soft.

 

[brianl703]

the traffic is horrible, they put a housing development in that is serviced by the same 2 lane farm to market road that was there 25 years ago but now 10,000 people use it

Same thing in Virginia. Additionally, that housing development might have 300 homes with only one access point on a 2-lane road and everyone in the housing development then wants a traffic light.

 

[brianl703]

I think concrete is more stable in very hot climates vs asphalt which gets soft.

I've seen asphalt here in Virginia that's rutted badly, at an intersection. That was replaced by the city (in Virginia, cities maintain their own roads) with concrete--against VDOT's advice. VDOT really does NOT like concrete.

Well, it's been 23 years and the concrete is still holding up nicely.

 

[Kestas]

if you were for fair licensing, a tractor trailer would pay 1000 dollars for its registration because it causes ten times the damage to the roads as a car does... since a bike probably causes .001 of the road wear a car does, maybe a 10 cent fee would be fair.

I find a flaw with this thinking. Damage to a road is not as linear as you present. Damage comes from two conditions - use and time. Even if few - or no - vehicles were using it, the road would cost money to maintain its presence.

 

[MSCH]

I find a flaw with this thinking. Damage to a road is not as linear as you present. Damage comes from two conditions - use and time. Even if few - or no - vehicles were using it, the road would cost money to maintain its presence.

hey, you and I could write a 1000 page thesis on this subject...in order to derive some sort of conclusion.... or we can use 1 sentence equivalents of sound bites.. which is all any of us really do here. ..

 

[Wingo]

if you were for fair licensing, a tractor trailer would pay 1000 dollars for its registration because it causes ten times the damage to the roads as a car does... since a bike probably causes .001 of the road wear a car does, maybe a 10 cent fee would be fair.

Ah, yea, their registration IS more, in most states anyway, and they use a lot more fuel hence pay more gas tax than most.