Ass, gas or grass – no one rides for free. So said the once popular bumper sticker.
Unless you drive an EV.
Then you can use the government to force someone else to “help” pay for your ride – and your road. Because you don’t have to pay any of the gas taxes that fund the roads.
It’s quite a five-fingered discount, too.
Gas taxes – federal and state – tally about 50 cents on average, added to the cost of every gallon of gasoline (and diesel) sold. If your car’s tank holds 15 gallons – which is typical – you’re paying about $7.50 in taxes every fill-up, regardless of the cost of the gas.
If you fill up twice a week, that’s about $30 per month – or $360 annually. Over the course of a six-year new car loan, the bite comes to $2,160.
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Owners of vehicles with bigger tanks that use more gas pay more in taxes, obviously. If you have an SUV or pick-up with a 21 gallon tank, each fill-up costs you about $10 in motor fuels taxes, or $40 each month – $480 annually.
$2,880 over six years.3
But EV owners don’t pay a red cent. This includes Ludicrous Speed energy hogs like the Tesla S – which burn up lots of untaxed electricity.
Which is why several states have begun sending them a separate bill for their use of the roads they’re not paying for.
It’s not much of a bill. In fact, it’s a lot less of a bill than the rest of us are paying (and not counting the other paying we’re doing . . . to “help” EV owners buy their car through subsidies and cost-shifting from unprofitable EVs to the profitable vehicles the rest of us buy but now pay just a bit more for, in order for EV owners to pay less for theirs).
Arkansas, for instance, recently passed a law that will require all EV owners to pay a $200 fee each year (added to the usual vehicle registration renewal fees) in lieu of paying at the pump. But it amounts to the same thing.
They’re being charged for what they use – just like the rest of us.
And it amounts to a discount, in relation to what the rest of us pay.
