The engine alone weighs more than 2K lbs so the drive axle is much heavier.
As you just said here. Assuming that single axle is 20K lbs it is doing over twice the load of my entire truck. That's significantly more damaging. Not to mention the box trucks, dump trucks, concrete mixer trucks, crane trucks ect that are driving down the road daily in the millions of vehicles. Passenger vehicles, even EVs, aren't what is wearing down the roadways.
I mean, they are. Just at a significantly lower rate then commercial traffic, a contention I have held from the beginning of this conversation. But this only holds true for major roadways. There are millions of miles of interior and surface streets that are very rarely (if ever) touched by commercial vehicles. One these roads, the majority of the damage is caused by passenger traffic.
This is such a good point and the first time I’ve seen it made.
This is true to some extent. I would like to suggest however, that those roadways, most of which are residential, are in much better shape than those like county roads that regularly see 18-wheelers and other commercial traffic, and that they also tend to go far longer before needing repair due to vehicle use. The roads in my neighborhood for example have been repaved one time in their 70+ year existence, due not so much to traffic wear and tear, but to having been dug up for replacement of sewer lines. This seems to suggest that the damage to residential roads from use by passenger vehicles while real, is relatively small.
There is a factor that I didn’t mention. The bigger need for gas taxes is for capacity improvements caused by the shear volume of vehicles. To add lanes or build new highways. This is the bigger reason to tax all vehicles including EVs of all sizes. I am not against taxing EVs to help pay for vehicle capacity improvements. The tax would be based on VMT (vehicle miles travelled). That is fair but hard to compute. Plus there are privacy issues I think DOTs are wrestling with. That was being discussed when I was at the DOT and still no resolution. I left the DOT in 2000. I think it is easy for commercial vehicles but not personal cars and trucks. Also the VMT would need to be broken up by state when you cross state lines due to local taxes.
Those interior streets last longer around here than the plan to replace them takes so our roads are pristine. The roads that take the beating are due to commercial traffic. In areas where the roads are bad, weather's usually the primary wear factor. The freeze-thaw cycle and snowplows with salt are the huge wear factor there.
From my vantage point, we are saying the same thing.
bigsky: We have a similar EV registration fee in our state. Our registration is good for 2 years. Annualized, it seems comparable to your's (~$158/yr). There are other fees on top of this but they apply to all vehicles (ICE & EV's). EV's are obviously exempt from the $25 emission tests which is required in certain counties. There is no GVW charge in our state for "light duty" vehicles.So the myth goes.
While EVs do not pay gasoline taxes, states do make sure that EVs still pay a so-called fair share through much higher annual registration fees levied on EVs only.
Comparing auto registration costs for my R1S to those for a typical ICE SUV, and eliminating commonalities, e.g., weight, it costs $225 more to register my R1S.
Looking at gasoline excise taxes in the area, the $225 additional EV registration tax would buy you 500 gallons of gasoline.
From the nerdy point of view, this means I would have had to charge north of 16,700 kWh on my Rivian to "break even"; I actually charged 3,400 kWh in 2024.
From the mileage point of view, overall consumption on my R1S for 2024 was 1.8 mi/kWh. That is 60 MPGe, which means that I would have to drive 30k miles in a given year to once again "break even"; I actually drove 6,300 miles in 2024.
And should I not drive my R1S at all; and it will be in winter storage for at least 6 months, I still pay the same for registration. No prorating. The same will go for my other two EVs. By comparison, ICE does not drive=ICE does not purchase gas=ICE does not pay taxes. Fair.
Registration fees on EVs seem capricious and arbitrary at best and can never begin to address the much-needed fairness. We all must pay our fair share for road usage. I am thinking ditch the excise tax on gasoline and make everybody pay annual registration according to mileage driven and throw in vehicle weight tax for good measure also. That would be very fair.
A side-by-side comparison on the R1S registration and an ICE SUV registration. The $75.00 EV tax "funds electric vehicle infrastructure." There is no such similar thing for the ICE SUV registration. In my days of driving ICE, I do not recall ever paying a tax for gasoline vehicle infrastructure, either.
Just a reality check.
Agreed but stress damage isn’t linear. But you capture the essence. They design pavements based on ESALs which take into consideration the total vehicle mix and their predicted volumes except motor cycles. The pavement section and therefore cost is mostly affected by semi’s.
Same in NY, we get hit with delivery & system charges that ramp with increased usage. We're all going to be switched to Time-of-Day (TOD) Rates at some point. In the meantime they give you the illusion of choice with all their convoluted rate programs.
