Ev tax in Oregon

[eleanor22]

Does anyone know about this EV tax they are voting for in Oregon? I heard it is supposed to be a mileage tax.

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[SteveInBend]

You can find more details here: https://fortune.com/2025/08/29/oregon-electric-vehicle-owners-pay-per-mile/

But essentially it's a proposed $340 flat rate or 2.3¢ per mile. Pick your poison.

 

[Eeyore]

I don't mind paying the equivalent tax that an ICE vehicle would have to pay to support road maintenance in Oregon, now that I'm retired and drive many fewer miles a year.

 

[Time2Roll]

I would sooner pay the flat fee and avoid the tracker.
Roads do need to be paid for.

 

[ev_james]

The problem is that these fees are too high. In New Jersey it's a flat $250 and our gas tax is ~$0.45/gallon. Assuming I drive 12,000 miles and all of that gas is purchased in-state, I'd have to drive a car only getting ~21 mpg to get to $250. Oregon is even worse. For $0.023/mile, you'd be driving a 20mpg car with $0.46/gallon tax. New Jersey for years incentivized people to get EVs and then they pull this. It feels like a bit of a betrayal.

 

[VSG]

I don't mind paying the equivalent tax that an ICE vehicle would have to pay to support road maintenance in Oregon, now that I'm retired and drive many fewer miles a year.

No one is objecting to paying their fair share.

Problem with all of these schemes is that they are NOT equivalent, and therefore not fair.

The fair thing to do would be to tax ICE vehicles and EVs the same way. In this case make them ALL pay a per-mile fee or a flat fee, and do away with the gas tax.

 

[thrill]

The railroad industry has complained for years, entirely correctly in my opinion, that the trucking industry is significantly subsidized by various state and federal treasuries in that the vast majority of the expense of road repair is caused by the use of heavy road vehicles. Rail companies obviously spend millions of dollars per mile to build sufficiently robust systems, and heavy trucks are more appealing than they would otherwise be because the taxpayer in general makes up their shortfall in tax collection. The point being, that the entire highway system could be paid by commercial vehicles hauling over 25,000 pounds, and all other motor vehicles could pay nothing, and we as taxpayers would be out about the same amount of money because we are the ones who have been making up those shortfalls anyway. Moving that tax collection to a smaller and already well organized commercial endeavor, i.e. interstate trucking, would simplify everyone's life and result in better roads. But, hey, it's America and the trucking industry is more than getting its money's worth in a mere $13 million of lobbying last year compared to the fast that the vast majority of road expense is due to the weight of those vehicles.

 

[beatle]

If moving to an indiscriminate tax on vehicles regardless of propulsion, do you also go by weight in addition to miles? I'll copy my own post from another thread talking about EV taxes / road wear:

Regarding axle load and road stress (wear) check out the fourth power law.​

​

2 ton car / 2 axles = 1 ton per axle​

3 1/2 ton R1T / 2 axles = 1.75 ton per axle​

​

The R1T has 1.75x the load per axle so we calculate stress: 1.75 * 1.75 * 1.75 * 1.75 = 9.37x more stress on the road than a 2 ton vehicle.​

​

A 60k truck may spread its load over 5 axles, so 6 tons per axle which is 3.42x the R1T: 3.42 * 3.42 * 3.42 * 3.42 = 136.8x more load than the R1T, and there are 2.5x as many axles, so 342x more load than the R1T, and 1,296x more than a 2 ton vehicle.​

​

Taxing purely based on weight and miles would put trucking out of business without some kind of change, and nobody wants to spend $20 to send someone a letter either. I think tying vehicle taxes to gasoline/diesel to recoup road costs needs an overhaul, but oversimplifying it would have some nasty ripple effects.​

If that were to go through, would people be okay with paying more for their goods that are carried by trucks? That's basically everything. It's true that trucks cause most of the road wear by the above calculations so they'd pay most of the road tax, but shipping fees would obviously go up to account for that additional cost. Or would people be okay with much longer shipping times if things predominantly shifted to rail for most of the trip to save on expensive road taxes?

 

[atebit]

Moving that tax collection to a smaller and already well organized commercial endeavor, i.e. interstate trucking, would simplify everyone's life and result in better roads.

Sylvester Stallone and a few of his “associates” want to explore this concept with you.

 

[Rivian Owner]

If moving to an indiscriminate tax on vehicles regardless of propulsion, do you also go by weight in addition to miles? I'll copy my own post from another thread talking about EV taxes / road wear:

Regarding axle load and road stress (wear) check out the fourth power law.​

​

2 ton car / 2 axles = 1 ton per axle​

3 1/2 ton R1T / 2 axles = 1.75 ton per axle​

​

The R1T has 1.75x the load per axle so we calculate stress: 1.75 * 1.75 * 1.75 * 1.75 = 9.37x more stress on the road than a 2 ton vehicle.​

​

A 60k truck may spread its load over 5 axles, so 6 tons per axle which is 3.42x the R1T: 3.42 * 3.42 * 3.42 * 3.42 = 136.8x more load than the R1T, and there are 2.5x as many axles, so 342x more load than the R1T, and 1,296x more than a 2 ton vehicle.​

​

Taxing purely based on weight and miles would put trucking out of business without some kind of change, and nobody wants to spend $20 to send someone a letter either. I think tying vehicle taxes to gasoline/diesel to recoup road costs needs an overhaul, but oversimplifying it would have some nasty ripple effects.​

If that were to go through, would people be okay with paying more for their goods that are carried by trucks? That's basically everything. It's true that trucks cause most of the road wear by the above calculations so they'd pay most of the road tax, but shipping fees would obviously go up to account for that additional cost. Or would people be okay with much longer shipping times if things predominantly shifted to rail for most of the trip to save on expensive road taxes?

Or, the much more efficient rail system would grow. A semi is 80 times less efficient than a train, IIRC. If trucks paid their honest share of road taxes, the market would find more efficient ways to move freight long distances. Trucks would then be used as the last mile service.

The trucking industry currently faces a shortage of drivers, moving more freight by rail would reduce the shortage.

The EV taxes are popular to politicians who are supported by the fossil fuel industry. There is nothing about fairness in the way these taxes are structured; the taxe are an admission by the fossil fuel industry that they can't compete with renewable energy technologies on a level playing field. They see the tide changing and will do what they can to hold it back.

 

[beatle]

Expanding the rail system would be incredibly expensive and time consuming. The US is absolutely gigantic, and building rails is far more difficult than building roads. The "last mile" where freight is handed off to trucks may still be several hundred miles.

That's not to say additional rail doesn't have its benefits, but to think it's going to replace the majority of what trucks move across the country is not at all realistic.

 

[Rivian Owner]

Expanding the rail system would be incredibly expensive and time consuming. The US is absolutely gigantic, and building rails is far more difficult than building roads. The "last mile" where freight is handed off to trucks may still be several hundred miles.

That's not to say additional rail doesn't have its benefits, but to think it's going to replace the majority of what trucks move across the country is not at all realistic.

Building wider heavier roads is less expensive than the alternatives in the long term? Extreme weather from global warming is less costly than improving our rail system? At 80 times the efficiency differential we can afford a cost premium for rail construction, and still come out ahead. The efficiency differential would probably be a lot less, but highways would cost a lot more to build, if we used the same engineering standards for highways that we use for rail construction. We should take into account the health and environmental impacts as part of the calculation of cost.

Im curious what your assumption about unrealistic build out costs of the rail system are built around? What facts support such a claim?

And, FYI "the last mile" was never meant to be a literal expression.

Sorry, I didnt mean to hijack this thread! I got a lot off topic, sorry.

 

[beatle]

Just building rail on flat ground isn't particularly expensive, but you have land acquisition which can be very, very expensive, and more tunnels and bridges need to be constructed for rail as trains do not negotiate grades or turns like road-going vehicles. Add complications like the fact that most rail is privately owned and the logistical differences associated with moving things via train vs. truck and you wind up with a solution that is incomplete at best, and worse in a lot of cases than the current disease of road maintenance and truck pollution.

Again, like I said, I'm not saying rail doesn't have its benefits, and I do think continuing to evaluate its expansion is wise in the long term, but I'm also a realist. Trains are great at moving large, heavy things like cars and trucks, and for bulk things such as raw materials. They are not so good at moving your individual packages and smaller quantities of things. Your initial proposal to just replace trucks with trains doesn't take into account the massive infrastructure expansion and unique problems that don't exist with trucks.

 

[Deleted member 26425]

Expanding the rail system would be incredibly expensive and time consuming. The US is absolutely gigantic, and building rails is far more difficult than building roads. The "last mile" where freight is handed off to trucks may still be several hundred miles.

That's not to say additional rail doesn't have its benefits, but to think it's going to replace the majority of what trucks move across the country is not at all realistic.

Maybe we never should have shrunk the once gigantic rail system in favor of the highway system?

 

[beatle]

The mileage of rail in use is shrinking, but ton-mileage is up. More goods are being moved by rail than before:

https://www.bts.gov/content/class-i...age-and-ton-miles-freight-1960-1965-1970-2015

This shows there is still demand for using rail in specific cases.

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