Tennessee Lawmakers Push $300 Fee for Owning an Electric Vehicle
upstart writes:
Tennessee's Republican Governor Bill Lee is considering a set of new road-related rules to fund a proposed transportation infrastructure bill. On the docket: raising the fee electric vehicle owners pay to register their cars. Currently, EV drivers pay $100 in the state every year; under newly announced budged scheme, that would triple to $300.
The reasoning is that car owners reliant on fossil fuels pay a gas tax every time they fill up at the pump, and those proceeds (mostly) go toward the budget for statewide highway and road maintenance. EV owners don't pay the gas tax. Tennessee's transportation commissioner, Butch Eley, said the proposed $300 annual fee would put EV owners in line with state estimates of what gasoline-users spend via the tax, which Gov. Lee has declared he will not raise.
[...] It's easy to forget that car infrastructure costs money (lots and lots of money), but every time drivers use a road or rely on a traffic signal, they're benefitting from a very expensive system built for their use. And in fact, car ownership is already heavily subsidized compared with other forms of transportation. According to one analysis from nonprofit Canadian media outlet The Discourse, society pays more than $9 for every $1 a driver pays in commuting, through infrastructure, accident liability, noise and air pollution, and congestion. Buses, biking, and walking all eat up much less public funds for the same amount of miles traveled.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.