Electric car owners in Vermont recently received a letter from the Department of Motor Vehicles with some bad news. Starting January 1, they will have to pay $178 a year to register their car. This is twice as much as owners of vehicles with internal combustion engines.
By charging higher rates, Vermont has become the latest state to make people pay a premium to drive electric. At least 39 states charge annual fees, including $50 in Hawaii and $200 in Texas, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. It happened a few years ago from the state of No.
Now, as President Trump takes back Biden administration measures to promote electric vehicles, Republicans in Congress are pushing back on state fees to shore up the dire fund, a fund used to fund roads and bridges. I'm considering imposing it.
Don't pay for electric cars for obvious reasons. They are examples of governments struggling to adapt to technological upheaval in the auto industry.
Environmentalists and consumer groups agree that electric vehicle owners should help pay for road maintenance and construction. But they worry that Republicans who control Congress will set fees at extremely high levels to punish electric car owners, who tend to be liberals.
That's already happening in Texas and other states, said Chris Hult, senior policy analyst at Consumer Reports, which focuses on transportation and energy.
“EV owners must contribute to paying for the roads they use,” he said. However, he added, “In some cases, states have implemented fairly punitive fees for EV drivers, far more than what gas vehicle owners pay.”
Flat fees are also unfair to low-income drivers and people who drive infrequently, making it even harder for people who drive less to afford less polluting cars, Hult said. said. Federal and state gasoline and diesel taxes are collected per gallon. So people who drive more or own gaslers automatically pay more.
The main reason for the decline in revenue from fuel taxes is that while internal combustion engines are becoming more efficient, political leaders are reluctant to raise fuel taxes to keep up with inflation.
The federal gasoline tax of 18.4 cents per gallon has not increased since 1993. The Highway Trust Fund, which finances transportation projects from its tax revenues, could go bankrupt without a new source of funding by 2027, analysts say. The list of tax and spending policies Congressional Republicans are considering includes imposing a fee on electric vehicles to help replenish the Highway Trust Fund.
According to the industry group Alliance for Automotive Innovation, there are 5.4 million electric vehicles on U.S. roads. But it's about 2% of the total and not the main cause of the revenue gap.
“Lawmakers are finding convenient scapegoats and punishing the cleanest vehicles on the road while ignoring the real causes of the shortage,” said Max Baum, director of electric vehicle infrastructure at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Hefner says.
Some of the highest electric vehicle rates are typically in states that elect Republicans, such as Texas, Wyoming, and Ohio, all of which charge $200 a year on top of regular registration fees.
Texas Republican Sen. Robert Nichols, who sponsored the 2023 law, said the amount would be determined by establishing a fee and analyzing how much the average owner of a gasoline-powered vehicle would pay. .
“It's not an anti-EV thing. We have Tesla here in Texas, and we're very proud of it,” he said. “But everyone has to pay for their roads.”
Texas is one of the states singled out by Consumer Reports for overcharging electric vehicle drivers. The organization notes that Texas has a relatively low gas tax of 20 cents per gallon, well below the national average of about 50 cents.
Nichols acknowledged that lawmakers are reluctant to raise taxes on gas-powered vehicle drivers. “Who doesn’t want that on Tombstone? “We raised the gas tax,” he said.
But increasingly, electric vehicle fees are not just a red-state phenomenon. Washington, which charges $150, is about as progressive as a blue state can get. And in Vermont, lawmakers passed a toll law last year because they were concerned that the growing number of electric vehicles posed a risk to the state's finances.
“Lawmakers recognized that we were nearing a tipping point where EV adoption became mainstream in Vermont,” he said.
Electric vehicles accounted for 12% of new car sales in Vermont last year, exceeding the national average of 8%. Murphy pointed out that fees collected from electric vehicle owners are earmarked for infrastructure like chargers. At $89 a year above the standard registration fee, Vermont's fees are also on the low end of the state's bills.
People on both sides of the debate agree that a fairer system would charge electric vehicle owners per mile driven. But doing that is complicated. Some states are experimenting with technology to track mileage and bill ownership accordingly. However, the system is expensive and raises privacy concerns.
Flat fees are “not perfect,” Nichols, the Texas congressman, acknowledged. “But it's a big step forward. It's fair without setting up a huge bureaucracy.”
Some states, including Iowa, Georgia, and Kentucky, electric vehicle chargers. But that system misses out on many cars. Most people charge at home and sometimes use public chargers.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, states that don't charge higher fees for electric vehicles include Alaska, Arizona, New York and Massachusetts.
In 2026, Vermont is set to become one of the first states to try to charge electric vehicle owners based on the amount they drive.
In Vermont, Murphy said, it will be relatively easy, since officials already collect odometer readings when cars are brought in for annual safety checks. In many states, this is not the case.
Even the systems that track mileage are flawed. It taxes owners for travel in other states and does not collect revenue from out-of-state visitors.
“The whole approach we've had is to keep things as simple as possible first and make sure every vehicle has something that pays something into our infrastructure,” Murphy said. Said. It's a fairer system. ”
