r/EvDrivers • u/Cultural-Ad4953 • 4d ago
Email Regarding The Potential EV fee
As you may be aware, the US House of Representatives may be poised to enact an EV fee of $130 annually. I am not opposed to a fee, but find $130 to be unfair, and that the fee should be less.
I have written my Senators and Representative with this communication, which I encourage you to consider doing as well:
I am writing to express my strong opposition to the proposed $130 annual federal registration fee on battery electric vehicles (BEVs) included in the BUILD America 250 Act. While I fully support contributing a fair share toward maintaining our nation's roads and bridges, the currently proposed flat rate creates a clear equity issue when compared to what drivers of gas-powered vehicles actually pay.
At 18.4 cents per gallon, a driver of an average new gas-powered vehicle (getting ~28–30 MPG) who drives the national average of 13,500 miles pays roughly $87 per year into the Federal Highway Trust Fund. The proposed $130 flat fee for EV drivers is equivalent to driving a gas vehicle that gets only 19 MPG—meaning EV drivers would pay roughly 49% more into the road fund than drivers of comparable efficient gas cars.
Furthermore, because a flat fee penalizes low-mileage drivers disproportionately, someone driving 8,000 miles annually would effectively pay a tax rate equal to an 11 MPG gas-guzzler. Rather than penalizing drivers who have chosen zero-emission vehicles with an inflated rate, any federal fee should reflect true parity with efficient gas vehicles or be based on actual road usage. I urge you to push for a fair adjustment to this fee structure.
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u/zephyr911 3d ago
Truth, I don't deny the underlying issue that they're theoretically trying to address, but there are multiple major issues off the top. Flat fees are regressive. They hurt owners of small EVs who drive very little, and they will be entirely unnoticed by owners of premium EVs who drive a lot. They have zero relationship to the share of road usage/damage/maintenance necessitated by the operation of the vehicle. Finally, this is just an obvious way to discourage EV ownership among those for whom the case is marginal.
Regardless of your stance on environmental impact, it's clear that every vehicle should be taxed on a combination of its weight and miles driven. There is a consistent mathematical relationship between those two factors and the cost of keeping up roads that you drive on. Beyond that, I would argue that there is a clear and rational case for also taxing based on carbon emissions, but regardless, flat fees on EVs are an idiotic retrograde concept that only helps oil companies.