Texas EV legislation

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ElectricAvenue

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 29, 2013
Messages
50
Location
Austin, Tejas
Email from Austin EV fourm

Dear EV folks;
For those who may have missed this news, there is pending legislation
this session regarding EVs...

Here is a link to a Statesman article:
http://www.statesman.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/environmental-bills-make-rounds-at-legislature/nWs6N/

Here is link to more info from the website Green Transportation
(Looks like a good website, at 1st glance anyway):

http://greentransportation.info/texas-proposals-for-electric-vehicle-taxes-and-fees

Here is a bit from that website --
"Rep. Linda Harper Brown (R-Irving) had introduced HB 1669, "Relating to
the establishment of an electric motor vehicle mileage fee pilot program
by the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles." The bill would, as the title
suggests, create a pilot program for testing a mile-based tax for electric
cars, and says mileage could be measured either by a periodic manual check
(most likely during annual registration, which I think is perfectly
reasonable) or from "a device installed in the vehicle that electronically
reports the number of miles traveled." Not cool."

Peace ya'll,
Tanda Rasco
 
As a Texan, I find this revolting. (No pun intended, Volt owners.) EVs are a tiny fraction of vehicles on the road, in most cases far lighter than the big SUVs and trucks that are everywhere and therefore wear out the road far slower, etc., etc., etc. How much money are they expecting to gain from this legislation? Just raise the damn gas tax (it's been the same amount for like 8 years!) and be done with it. Don't penalize EV drivers and further push back adoption.

I'm off to write some letters. :evil:
 
I wonder, how would they know, what's the E-mileage vs ICE mileage in combined cars like Volt? If Volt-like vehicles are exempted, than it's discrimination.
 
Taxes that support road maintenance should be based on weight and distance driven for all vehicles, both of which relate to the amount of damage a vehicle inflicts on roads. For pure ICE vehicles, gasoline and diesel taxes correlate very well with weight and distance driven but obviously don't apply at all to BEV's and don't correlate as well for ICE-electric hybrids. So in my perfect world, gasoline and diesel taxes would remain as a form of carbon tax with annual vehicle registration fees based on weight and distance driven as determined in annual inspections. Note that carbon-based fuels used for electricity generation would also be taxed to discourage their use, so electricity used by EV's might also include a carbon tax. Any other scheme is unfair to some vehicle categories.
 
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