Post #4864653 · Elektrine

2026-09-27 03:09 UTC

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.

Replies (1)

@ExFed@programming.dev 2026-09-27 21:05

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.

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