US transportation bill would add a $130 annual fee for EV drivers

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/05/bipartisan-bill-in-congress-includes-130-annual-ev-registration-fee/

by logickkk1 • 2 months ago

38 54 2 months ago

amykhar• 2 months ago

It kind of makes sense because gasoline taxes help fund road projects. Of course, if you live in a state like Pennsylvania, there's not much evidence of real improvements to the pothole infested roads.

DANmode5• 2 months ago

On-topic: tire taxes already go into a Federal cleanup fund, increasing those makes sense.

Off-topic: Metal doesn’t do well in that region,

you expect better from road-materials?

When in PA/NY and others near the Lakes, I regularly see newer rusted cars,

rusted-out newer satellite dishes…

PennDOT is possibly one of the best in the country.

Your expectations for the physical shape of the roads and their materials are absurd,

given the chronic, sustained WEEKS of humidity, precipitation/snow in the region.

stasomatic2• 2 months ago

Have you been to Europe? I just returned from Paris where it rained and hailed last week. The roads are pristine. Same in London.

kha1n3vol3• 2 months ago

They should simply place the fee on tires. Then it is a consumable tied to usage rather than trying to match the fee to estimate of mileage.

prettychill2• 2 months ago

tires all wear in different ways and for different reasons.

Erem3• 2 months ago

What reasons wouldn’t also reflect wear against the roads though? I think the idea is to impose a price based on wearing the roads, and a tire tax pretty elegantly approximates that I think

advisedwang• 2 months ago

Gas tax also is not well calibrated to road wear.

404mm2• 2 months ago

And with my kind of luck, I replace about 2-3 tires in the life span of a set due to road hazards.

thelastgallon3• 2 months ago

On weight. 4th power of weight, road damage is proportional to 4th power of weight.

Erem3• 2 months ago

Is tire damage proportional to the same figure? If so, heavier cars will naturally require more tire replacements and tire tax collection will more or less match contribution to road wear

nobodyandproud• 2 months ago

Commercial trucks and logistic-dependent firms like Amazon would have a fit, over losing this entitlement.

404mm2• 2 months ago

Weight is only one dimension. What matters is weight and mileage. Our family has two cars but we drive less combined than a typical single person in our area.

TacticalCoder• 2 months ago

On weight. 4th power of weight, road damage is proportional to 4th power of weight.

Yup. Which is why damage due to personal vehicles, even heavy EV ones (heavy due to the batteries), is a rounding error in road damage. A single semi passing on a road shall damage it more than one million regular cars. Something insane like that.

It's totally obvious on the three-lanes european highways: the leftmost lane is never deformed like the right-most lane is. And the rightmost lane is deformed on two bands: precisely where the tires of the semis are passing.

Politicians, worldwide, always prone to steal from people, have of course planned everything: WLTP (Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicles Test Procedure), are going to make sure they rip everybody off.

The scam is beautiful: in the EU for example... Make sure everybody switches to EV vehicles, then make sure everybody repeats "road damage is proportional to 4th power of weight" (with conveniently ignoring the issue of trucks weight), so that then you can tax vehicles that are now heavy.

While, of course, making sure that electricity prices are through the roof.

We're already at a point, in some EU countries, where superchargers on the highways cost more money than a gasoline car for the same mileage.

A tax on tires would at least make some sense. But inventing a tax on weight now that cars have heavy EV batteries is just petty.

mint53• 2 months ago

That makes a ton of sense except one killer flaw - literally killer.

People will put off buying new tires to dangerous extents. Yes Some people already do that, but adding any meaningful fee/tax on new tires will most certainly lead to people drawing out replacements and causing severe accidents.

peterlk• 2 months ago

This is not a very compelling argument. Things already cost money. We wouldn’t oppose a water tax because we were worried people might refuse to hydrate themselves once water was marginally more expensive. It might marginally exacerbate an existing problem, but the benefit of solving the target problem (funding roads fairly), even if imperfectly, is a much greater good

linkjuice4all• 2 months ago

Unfortunately many states (north eastern states that spread salt on their roads I’m looking at you) have rolled back their safety inspections - but this is the perfect application of a reasonable state-sanctioned activity. Tax tires, inspect vehicles, write fixit tickets, and let insurance handle the rest of the edge cases where deadbeats caused harm with their slick-tired jalopies.

watersb4• 2 months ago

My EV eats tires at a high rate that's not consistent with other cars in its size class.

It also weighs only 2650 pounds, nearly half that of many other passenger vehicles on the road today.

But my car is weird, not at all common in the United States, and no longer manufactured.

DANmode5• 2 months ago

Weird indeed! Smart EQ Fortwo?

If yes, RWD vs AWD is your answer, combined with wider rear tires.

thelastgallon3• 2 months ago

This is not enough. To undo the damage done by previous years sales of EVs, perhaps add a minimum 7500 (upto 100000 depending on price of car) federal sales tax on car manufacturers without dealerships and/or who sell more than 200K EVs per annum. This disincentive is absolutely necessary to undo the damage done by these eyesores on American roads.

Erem3• 2 months ago

Having dealerships has nothing to do with road wear. Are you just shaping those conditions to target the car companies you don’t like?

ivraatiems2• 2 months ago

"We should tax EVs because I think they are ugly" is a take I genuinely would never have imagined I'd hear.

bdangubic• 2 months ago

if ugliness = taxation on cars, every US made car should get a special $100k tax on top of MSRP, Ford and Chevy like $150k :)

thelastgallon3• 2 months ago

Legislators are forgetting that they can charge a federal tax at charging stations, 18.4 cents/watt or something like that.

bluefirebrand• 2 months ago

Charitably, they maybe haven't forgotten this.

Maybe they think that most people will just charge at home instead of charging stations if they pay significantly more at charging stations

DANmode5• 2 months ago

Why start with the lever everybody expects and nobody will ever stop you from pulling?

stahtops• 2 months ago

People charge at home: no $ People charge at work: business has to eat the cost, can’t have that.

If this fee makes sense, then they should also remove any existing taxes for roads and assess the fee to every car.

idontwantthis• 2 months ago

User already do. That’s just how you use an electric car.

m463• 2 months ago

tax what you want less of...

JumpCrisscross• 2 months ago

if state departments of transport don’t collect this federal EV tax, the federal government will “withhold an amount equal to 125 percent of the amount owed from the state’s highway apportionment.”

Ah, I see the game plan. Republicans pass this. Democrats then stiff red states in some particular way, maybe by taxing the ethanol content of gasoline.

tstrimple• 2 months ago

When do Democrats stiff red states? This "hurt your opponents" style of governance comes exclusively from one political party in the US and it's not the Democratic Party. I would almost guarantee as soon as Democrats regain power they will try to shift to "politics as usual" and try to be bipartisan about things.

iugtmkbdfil834• 2 months ago

Just a reminder to folks everywhere. Never say to new taxes. After all, last time I checked, roads were supposed to be taken care of by gas tax ( which is extra hilarious, because Trump administration was trying to figure out how to waive it for now ).

ivraatiems2• 2 months ago

It's fair to say that EV owners need to pay their share of road taxes. I don't think even most EV owners would necessarily disapprove of that in principle; I am one and I don't at all.

I do think that this bill is clearly structured to disincentivize EV purchases at a time when transitioning to EVs is an extremely good ideas for both the public and the climate.

There are a ton of other ways to go about this that would be less punitive: A one-time fee at purchase. A tax on public charging. A tax on charger purchase for home use, or on electricity at homes which have chargers installed.

I think the goal here is to get people not to buy EVs.

Also - and maybe this is a shortcoming of the reporting in the article, not the legislation - I have questions. How is this going to be collected? Is the IRS going to ask if you own an EV and then assess a tax? Are states going to do it? Who's going to pay for the process of figuring out who owns which EVs and how much to tax them? Is there a grandfather period for existing EVs or are we taxing all EVs going forward? Are we taxing them retroactively, too?

(By the way, the "Albert Gore" quoted in the article, despite their similar names and political interests, appears to be no relation to the former Vice President of the United States. That's a fun coincidence.)

watersb4• 2 months ago

Tax everyone based on annual miles * weight of the vehicle.

US transportation bill would add a $130 annual fee for EV drivers

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