Louisiana about to impose road tax on EV's
- Thread starter T. A. Gardner
- Start date
Geeko Sportivo
Verified User
I am just saying when a state rebels and becomes Politically against new technologies like Electric cars as a whole, they would eventually not allow for the Charging Stations or the sale of such vehicles there. There would be no infrastructure for electric cars there.
Business would choose not to re-locate and move their employees there in a state that is moving backwards and not forward- and it would eventually kill tourism to their state!
People would move to more sane and modern states that had more options available for them.
Althea
Althea told me...
All good points.
Just like there was ZERO technological reason we need to go to cordless tools?
Sorry, but while you're entitled to your denials, I'll stick with NASA's assessment.
T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
Just like there was ZERO technological reason we need to go to cordless tools?
Sorry, but while you're entitled to your denials, I'll stick with NASA's assessment.
Wrong again. Cordless tools eliminate extension cords and the need for a generator or other power source on a construction site. The convenience of those greatly increases their usefulness. That doesn't extend to vehicles though. There is no advantage to a battery car, and there are several obvious disadvantages.
Battery car disadvantages:
Battery life
Inability to carry extra charge--limits them to locations where charging is available
Charge time
Issues with accessing a charging point.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration is your friend.
Fortunately, those with EV's wind up paying a lot less over the life of their car than people with comparable vehicles that use internal combustion engines. $110/year won't negate that.
Take the Mini Cooper, as an example, since there are directly comparable combustion and EV versions.
EV:
Price $30,750
-$7,500 federal tax incentive
-$2,500 Louisiana tax credit
Five years maintenance $4,950
Five-year Fuel cost: $3,232
- remaining value (purchase price less 5 years depreciation): $9,863
Louisiana Road Tax, 5 years: $550
Total cost of five years of ownership: $19,619
Gas-powered:
Price $24,250
Five years maintenance $6,398
Five-year Fuel cost (assuming $4/gallon and 15k per year) $9,600
- remaining value (purchase price less 5 years depreciation): $8,020
Total cost of five years of ownership: $32,228
So, even with the road tax, you'll be shelling out about 64% more over five years to own that internal-combustion-engine. From a personal finance perspective, that's a poor decision, but some people are willing to pay a premium for the satisfaction of knowing that they're doing their part to destroy the environment.
https://vincentric.com/Home/Industry-Reports/Vincentric-Segment-Analysis-Ownership-Costs
https://www.caranddriver.com/shopping-advice/a32494027/ev-vs-gas-cheaper-to-own/
That said, what I'd like to see is a move to GPS-based road taxes. Basically, treat all roads as if they were toll roads, and simply distribute the expected costs of maintaining and patrolling each road across their actual users, so that you pay for what you use (possibly with an adjustment based on vehicle weight, since bigger vehicles cause more wear and tear).
The advantage of that would be that it would cut back on the huge subsidy the currently goes to rural people. Costs to maintain roads, per vehicle mile, are much, much higher in areas where roads aren't used as much.... since much of the deterioration of a road is caused by weather and time, and that portion will happen to the same degree whether there's 100 cars using that road per day, or 100,000. That means when taxes to fund roads are paid for by way of what is effectively a per-mile tax (like gas taxes), people who mostly drive on heavily-trafficked roads are overpaying, while those who mostly drive on sparsely traveled roads are underpaying.
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The advantage, aside from lower cost for the consumer, is the environmental impact. With battery-driven cars, the energy comes in part from low- or zero-carbon generation, meaning less fossil fuel contribution per vehicle mile. Moreover, with battery-driven cars, there is less particulate pollution and chemical pollution going into our neighborhoods (even when it's ultimately powered by fossil fuels at the generator level, that's more likely to be an ultra-efficient combined cycle natural gas station, where the exhaust not only gets scrubbed much more effectively before going into the air, but also tends to go up high smoke stacks and get washed out before winding up in people's lungs the way that happens if the exhaust is being spewed right on roads next to where people live.
There's also less noise pollution with electric vehicles. Although some road noise is from tires on roads and wind resistance, and that happens either way, electric vehicles tend to be MUCH quieter overall, especially at lower speeds. I once lived in an apartment complex sitting next to a stroad with a traffic light, and the traffic noise as people accelerated out of that light could be terrible (especially with motorcycles, big trucks, and sports cars). Electric vehicles are nearly silent when doing that.
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T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
I already showed that isn't necessarily true. But when you push ownership out to say 8 to 10 years the ICE vehicle becomes vastly less expensive. That's because in an EV you have a battery replacement costing $20,000 + that is a certainty while a well-maintained ICE vehicle can run for decades. I know, I have one pick up right now, a Nissan Frontier, that is going on 250,000 miles and is old enough to buy a beer. Total repair and maintenance costs amount to maybe $3,000 on it, if that.
As for using GPS to track road use. Not possible so long as there are vehicles with no GPS in them on the roads and no, you can't force a retrofit as that violates making ex-post facto laws. Gas taxes did distribute the costs fairly because the more you drove, the more fuel you used, and the more taxes you paid. The problem with EV's is you can't always tax where they charge.
That's certainly a propaganda point the right has been making for a while now, but electric car batteries are actually estimated to last between 10 and 20 years.... and, if you hold onto your car for that long, there's going to effectively be almost zero residual value in either car -- just whatever you get from scrap. So, as between owning an electric vehicle for 15 years and owning an ICE for 15 years, the case for the electric vehicle actually gets stronger and stronger over time, as the importance of that initial price differential becomes ever smaller relative to the lower maintenance and fuel costs of the EV.
No, you could do a hybrid approach -- basically, require those units in new vehicles (it costs as little as $50), and then just charge a road tax for the older vehicles, while those are gradually being phased out. Within a few years, you'd have most vehicles paying by way of the GPS.
No, you could definitely require a retrofit. There are examples of legally required retrofits. But, as I said, that wouldn't be needed, since you could just do a road tax for non-GPS units.
Did you not understand the point I made about how only a portion of the decay of a road is proportional to vehicle miles traveled on it?
Here, let's greatly simplify so that the point is clear. Let's say you have two neighborhoods. Each is located at the end of its own one mile private access road. Each road has to be plowed of snow to be useable, at a cost of $10,000 per road per year. One of those neighborhoods has ten people using that road. One has 1,000.
Now, consider two ways of financing it.
(1) Everyone pays in accordance with how many miles they travel on the access roads. For simplicity, say everyone uses their respective road the same amount -- outbound and back once per day for a commute. Total cost, $20,000, divided by total people, 1,010, equals a per person per year cost of about $19.80.
(2) Those who use each road pay for the road they use. So, people in the small neighborhood pay $1,000 ($10,000/10), while people in the big neighborhood pay $10 ($10,000/1,000).
Clearly, going for the first financing approach effectively has the small-community people heavily subsidized by the big-community people. That snow-plowing cost is a fixed cost and doesn't care whether 10 people are using the road or 1,000: the road needs to be plowed either way.
That same principle holds true when you compare roads leading to highly-populous urban areas and remote rural ones. Some of the costs needed to maintain and patrol the roads are fixed whether the roads have a few hundred people using them or a few hundred thousand. So, when you do a per-mile fee regardless of which roads people are using, you wind up with urban people heavily subsidizing rural ones.
Airstrip One
Completely Effed
Hopefully my battery will die somewhere close to town.
Geeko Sportivo
Verified User
The US is not ready to go all Electric, as there is no infrastructure set up to handle re-charging Electric Cars quite yet.
Congress is what is holding that up as Congress is divided by those who want to obstruct change to protect the Oil Industry, and those who are trying to move us into the future so we won't be left behind by the rest of the world.
I know this- American Car manufactures are on the side of moving us into the future and have re-tooled themselves and are fully committed towards leading the world in manufacturing the worlds greatest electric automobiles.
The future is coming and not even the Oil Industry and all of their Lobbyists that own the current politicians won't be able to hold it off much longer.
ExpressLane
Verified User
In general well off people drive Teslas. They should be paying their fair share of the cost to maintain roads just like everyone else. Tax them!
evince
Truthmatters
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha
So you are pro taxes now?
You only like taxes that you don’t have to pay
RUBEpublican
Stringfellow Hawk
Member
prove biden cocksucker
taxes are not the problem, wasteful spending of them is.
So you think Louisiana's biggest problem is too much wasteful spending on roads and education? Have you been to Louisiana?
Iin their case its more like wasteful spending on social programs with money budgeted for flood control maintenance. Remember that from Katrina
Airstrip One
Completely Effed
Oh, so, it's not going to happen tomorrow? You're sounding like a Republican with this rational timetable of yours!
Unlike with an ICE, where you must find a gasoline station, with an EV, you just need to find an outlet.