Vermont electric car owners recently received a letter from the Motorized Vehicle Department with bad news. As of January 1 they would have to pay $ 178 a year to register their cars, twice that vehicles with internal combustion motor.
By imposing a higher rate, Vermont became the last state to make people pay a premium for driving electric vehicles. At least 39 states charge these annual rates, including $ 50 in Hawaii and $ 200 in Texas, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. This figure is higher than that of any state a few years ago.
Now, while President Trump reverses the Biden Administration measures to promote electric vehicles, Republicans in Congress are considering imposing a national rate to reinforce the fund used to finance roads and bridges, a fund that is located in A desperate situation.
Rates are an attempt to compensate for the decrease in revenues from gasoline taxes than electric cars, for obvious reasons, do not pay. They are an example of how governments struggle to adapt to technological agitation in the automotive industry.
Environmentalists and consumer groups agree that electric vehicle owners should help pay the maintenance and construction of roads. But they are worried that Republicans, who control Congress, set the rate at extremely high levels to punish owners of electric vehicles, which tend to be liberals.
That has already happened in Texas and other states, said Chris fed up, senior analyst at Consumer Reports policies that focuses on transport and energy.
“Electric vehicle owners should contribute to pay the roads they use,” he said. But, he added, “in some cases, states are implementing rates that are quite punitive for electric vehicle drivers, significantly more than the owner of a gasoline vehicle would pay.”
Fixed rates are also unfair to low -income drivers or for people who do not drive much, which makes them even more difficult to buy cars that contaminate less, they said fed up and others. Federal and state taxes to gasoline and diesel are applied by gallon, so that people who drive more (or those who have vehicles that consume a lot of gasoline) automatically pay more.
The main reason why the income from fuel taxes has decreased is that internal combustion engines have become much more efficient, while political leaders have been reluctant to increase fuel taxes to keep up with Inflation.
The Federal Federal Gasoline Tax of 18.4 cents per gallon has not increased since 1993. The road trustee, which finances transport projects with the income of that tax, could become insolvent in 2027 without new sources of financing, say the Analysts A list of fiscal and spending policies that Republicans in Congress are considering including imposing fees on electric vehicles to help replenish the road trustee.
There are 5.4 million electric vehicles on US roads, according to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an industrial group. But that is approximately 2 percent of the total and is not the main cause of the income gaps.
“Legislators are finding a convenient scapegoat and penalizing cleaner vehicles on roads while ignoring the true cause of the deficit,” said Max Baumhefner, director of Infrastructure of Electric Vehicles of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Some of the highest rates for electric vehicles are found in states that usually choose Republicans, such as Texas, Wyoming and Ohio, which charge 200 dollars a year in addition to the usual registration rate.
Robert Nichols, a Republican state senator in Texas who sponsored legislation in 2023 that established a rate, said the amount was determined by analyzing how much the average owner of a gasoline vehicle pays.
“It is not something anti-ev. We have Tesla here in Texas and we are very proud, ”he said, referring to the electric car manufacturer, which is headquarters and a factory in Austin. “But everyone has to pay along the way.”
Texas is among the states indicated by Consumer Reports receivable more to electric vehicles drivers. The organization cites the relatively low gasoline tax of Texas, 20 cents per gallon, well below the national average of approximately 50 cents.
Nichols acknowledged that legislators were reluctant to increase taxes to gasoline car conductors. “Nobody wants that on his tombstone: 'The gasoline tax increased,” he said.
But more and more, electric vehicles are not just a phenomenon of red states. New Jersey, where the gasoline tax is more than double than in Texas, began to charge the owners of electric vehicles a rate of $ 250 last year. Washington, which charges $ 150It is as progressive as any blue state.
In Vermont, legislators approved a rate law last year because they were concerned that a growing number of electric vehicles represented a risk to state finances, said Patrick Murphy, director of state policies of the Vermont transport agency.
“Legislators acknowledged that we are approaching the turning point in which the adoption of electric vehicles has become common in Vermont,” he said.
Electric vehicles represented 12 percent of new car sales in Vermont last year, above the national average of 8 percent. Murphy said that rates collected to electric vehicles owners are allocated to infrastructure such as chargers. With $ 89 a year above the standard registration rate, the Vermont rate is also at the lower end of what states charge.
People on both sides agree that a more fair system would charge the owners of electric vehicles per walked mile. But doing that is complicated. Some states are experiencing with technology that tracks the mileage and invoice to the owners accordingly. But the systems are expensive and pose privacy problems.
A fixed rate “is not perfect,” said Nichols, the Texas legislator. “But it is a great step forward. It is fair without creating a huge bureaucracy. ”
Some states, including Iowa, Georgia and Kentucky, impose taxes on electric vehicles. But that system ignores many cars. Most people charge at home and use public loaders only occasionally.
The states that do not charge higher rates to electric cars include Alaska, Arizona, New York and Massachusetts, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In 2026, Vermont plans to be among the first states to try to charge the owners of electric vehicles depending on how much they drive.
That will be relatively easy in Vermont, Murphy said, because officials already collect odometer readings when the owners carry their cars for annual security controls. That is not the case in many states.
Even a system that tracks mileage has failures. Traw for travel to other states and do not collect income from visitors from other states.
“All the approach we have had is to keep things as simple as possible at the beginning, implement something in which all vehicles pay something for our infrastructure,” Murphy said, “and then evolve over time to do continuously is a more system fair”.
(Tagstotranslate) Electric and hybrid vehicles (T) Sales and consumption tax ) States (USA)
