Washington Senate Passes Bill to Charge Electric Vehicle Owners a $100 Annual Fee

This is what I sent to my representatives:

This bill is very poorly written. While I very much want to pay my fair share, the wording of the bill taxes 100% electric vehicles, while ignoring plug-in hybrids. A driver of a plug-in hybrid vehicle (like the Chevy Volt) can continue to avoid paying road taxes under SB 5251. All they have to do is only use the electric power of the vehicle and never run on gasoline, while a LEAF driver pays $100 per year. How is this fair? The LEAF has 0% emissions, which should be a huge benefit to the area given our current smog problem.

Further, this $100 tax is excessively high. If I drive 10,000 miles per year, the tax works out to $0.01 per mile in tax. I currently pay $0.03 per mile for the electricity to drive the car. That works out to a 25% tax per mile. This will dramatically limit adoption of a technology that is a clear benefit to the region. We have an abundance of clean, cheap hydroelectric power. Approving this tax is a vote against energy independence, clean air, and punishes buyers who are trying to help the most.

Please vote against this tax as it is poorly formed not fair.

It's worth noting that the Washington State legislature punted on charging a fee for studded tires which are proven to cause significant damage to roads. Apparently they are OK with giving the small number of electric car owners a symbolic middle finger with a proposal which will generate a few thousand bucks a year while fearing the block back of charging a few dollars when studded tires are added to a car.

If gasoline taxes are fair (and the fact is that they aren't so this is like saying "if the sky is sparkly orange", i.e., one can put pretty much anything after that, but never mind that...), then the EV tax should be based on miles driven electrically in the state, multiplied (or divided) by the efficiency of the electric drive, and this charge should be levied against all EVs, whether "pure" or plug-in hybrids.

This is, of course, "too hard" to compute. More importantly, we know that gasoline taxes are not fair. It's more reasonable to simply charge state and federal taxes on "total miles driven" with some sort of weight-related adjustment, since heavier vehicles do more road damage. Yes, this means that if you drive outside of your "home" state, they get extra money. But we could dump gasoline taxes entirely, and use yearly odometer readings during yearly registrations to compute the tax bills.

The above proposal is not perfect either, it's just better than what we have now. I'm not suggesting that we do it any time soon, either: we should be subsidizing electric cars for a while, and allowing EV (and plug-in hybrid) owners to escape fuel taxes for another decade or so seems like a good idea to me.

If the tax is to be proportional to the damage done to the roads, than cars should not have to pay much at all. To be fair the tax should be some amount times the miles driven times the weight of the car to the third power. With trucks weighing 20 times a car and traveling so many more miles on average, cars are just in the noise.

So if you do not care about the stated reason ("need to maintain our roads" and "contribute their fair share to the upkeep of our roads"), and want the tax to be somewhat fair try the following for a Leaf (1521 is the mass in kilos):

$0.00000000000236833333 * 1521^3 * miles driven

For 12,000 miles that works out to $100.00 for the leaf. Under their current system a midsize family car would pay about $166.67. A 5000 pound pickup truck would be $333.63 for the same 12,000 miles. The truck getting 19 MPG would only pay $236.84 under the current system. A tractor trailer weighing 80,000 pounds would pay $1,366,551.47 for just 12,000 miles, but that would be the fair amount to pay for the relative road damage.

If you are going to make the EVs pay a fixed amount, it would be only fair for the other cars to pay a fixed amount as well.

In summary, trucks destroy the roads, not cars. Anybody talking about "fair share" is uninformed or worse.

What about 100 $ per year for pedestrians to pay for maintenance of sidewalks.
This is completly in the oil lobby's way. A clear dumb decision.

This is double taxation we pay taxes on electricity and fees .

When a politician talks about "fair" it's just double-speak. What a politician really wants is more power over your money and he will spout whatever rhetoric he thinks will sell it to the "ignorant masses". Since, for now at least, most EV owner's are a wealthy minority it will take personal lobbying or an explosion of common sense in the masses to overrule these power hungry dirt-bags.

It is important to note that this bill will face some opposition in the Washington State House of Representatives:

Thanks for writing me to express your opposition to SB 5251, imposing an additional vehicle license fee on electric vehicles. I do not support increasing fees or taxes on folks, especially during these tough economic times.

As the budget is negotiated in this year's Session, I will keep your opposition of new fees for electric cars in mind. Sustainable transportation options are an important piece of the economic puzzle and we must work hard to ensure people continue to have access to these types of things.

Thank you again for contacting me regarding this important issue and please do not hesitate to contact me in the future to express your support or concerns regarding the issues my colleagues and I will be considering.

Thanks,

Mike Hope
State Representative
44th District
P.O. Box 40600
Olympia, Washington 98504-0600

@CharlesF: I really like your calculations. :-) Even with the cube of the weight, thought, it's still not really perfect, since a substantial amount of damage is simply weathering etc., and the design of the tires has a lot of impact (see "studded tires" comments), as does driving style on asphalt when it's hot (asphalt becomes kind of plastic and can be pushed around by acceleration—here I am using the word in its physics sense to imply cornering and braking as well).

(Truck weights are also quite load-dependent, which is why there are weigh stations for them, and they do actually contribute a lot to road maintenance money. Not sure about WA state here, but I believe Calif is pretty good at collecting.)

Wealthy is being able to pay 25K for a new car, my last "new" car cost me 3k.

Here we go again, just because you don't use gasoline does not mean you are responsible for the poor maintenance program for your state highway. But you are such good as citizens you volunteer to pay more than your fair share in road tax. Oregon agreed to pay 1.4 cents per mile and that set a precedent. And Washington meekly is submitting to a $100 extra road charge with each year's vehicle registration, Now Arizona is considering an additional one cent per mile road charge for EV and Hybrids. (" Because they get such good mileage at over 100 mpg they aren't buying enough gas to pay the tax to fix the roads.) That is not a valid agreement. Just look at a residential street - it lasts 30 years, but the Truck-route, it lasts less than one year. I would infer that heavy laden trucks destroy roads, not cars, electric or not. And, who benefits from truck traffic? Consumers! Trucks bring the stuff to stores, and don't tell me they are half empty. I have driven a full load of beer from Tampa to Miami, and the trailer was only half full but the weight was a full 80,000 lbs. Most trucks are on the road with full loads. They measure the load size by weight. The only fair way to fix the road tax versus road repair debacle is increase the general sales tax by one cent and that will raise sufficient funding to fix the highways and roads. You want proof? Visit Polk County Florida, ten years ago, they added a one cent extra sales tax in their county and have used it on the roads. All the roads are now in good condition many have been widened, turn lanes added, traffic lights updated and added overall much better than 10 years ago. The nice thing about a sales tax penny is every consumer contributes. The Rich buy more and pay more tax. The poor buy food and pay no sales tax anyway (In Florida!) The Tourists and transients make purchases like motel rent and restaurant meals and pay sales tax. The truckers still carry the goods but the drivers pay but a few extra pennies for tax on meals. But when the items they deliver to the stores at the mall or downtown are sold, the sales tax is collected and a penny helps pay for that wear and tear on the roadways. The sales tax for road repair is a lot more sensible than singling out electric cars and hybrids and charging them one cent extra per mile (Like Arizona) or $100 extra each year (Like Washington.)

If I lived there & they didn't also charge bicycle owners the same fee, I'd really be pissed.

Re-elect no one.

Aston Martin DB9 owners get 13 MPG. Clearly they are paying more than their fair share for a car that weighs a bit more than a Volt. Will they get a check from the state of Washington ?

The Volt buyer pays 4,000.00 in sales tax

The Leaf buyer pays zero.

Perhaps the Leaf buyer would prefer to pay 4,000.00 up front instead of 4,000.00 over 40 years.... Assuming they drive the car that long...

Any Leaf owners, here is my offer, you give me $4,000.00 cash to reimburse my sales tax payment to Oly and I will pay your 100 per year tax as long as you own your car.....

crickets........

No Leaf Driver you do not pay taxes on everything else....

In Washington State the Leaf is tax exempt on the initial sales tax.... that savings is far more value than the 100/ year tax.....

Again, any Leaf driver feeling ripped off give me $4,000.00 for my Wash State sales tax on the Volt and I will pay your $100/ per year as long as you own your car.....

.......

crickets .......