There was a discussion a couple of years ago around gasoline taxes and how they are supposed to pay for roadway maintenance. The question came up about EVs. There were discussions about how to include EVs in the taxation system so they would pay for their fair share of the road. One of the options was to impose a tax attached to your vehicle registration based upon the weight of the vehicle. The greater the weight, the more wear and tear it produces on the road surface. This might be one solution to the barrier problem, namely moving the extra cost to the reason for the extra cost.
The “problem” with that tax is that if it’s applied fairly, it gets very big very fast. The damage to the road goes up with weight, but not linearly. Not a square factor, either. Not even cube. It’s to the fourth power.
Start applying that to long haul trucks and the whole industry will be bankrupt in a month. The implication being that we are all subsidizing that industry with taxes on roads. Including that one trucker with a “who is John Galt?” sticker on the back.
That said, this is also a very good argument for improving cargo trains to the point where most long haul trucking goes away.
And frankly, I’m really ok with this.
Trains should be the backbone for shipping. They are WAY more fuel efficient, like 3 to 4x more efficient than shipping by truck. Rail requires far less maintenance. And there’s always the option install a 3rd rail and use electricity instead of fossil fuels to ship.
Speaking of road tax, you know that bad-faith argument about how cyclists need to pay our “fair share?” Well, I would be happy to pay 1¢ for my 10 kg bicycle if everybody with a car had to pay fairly by weight4.
Maybe it’s because I don’t really know anyone passionate on either side of this issue, but I’ve never heard of this argument. I know you said it’s a bad faith argument, but I can’t really imagine what a cyclist’s fair share would be aside from maybe widening a road to add a bike lane lol
No reason the tax had to scale exactly to match the damage though. At least make it painful enough so people consider whether a larger vehicle is worth it.
What I’m suggesting is to ramp up the tax on roads over several years in order to pay for the initial outlay on new train infrastructure. Then you don’t need 90% of the trucking industry at all.
Which would be great for many other reasons.
What if it’s not a larger vehicle, but transitioning from a petrol burning vehicle to an electric vehicle?
We don’t want to give people reasons to hold on to old combustion vehicles any longer than they have to, but the roads of course need to be made safe for passengers and pedestrians and wildlife, I agree.
So much of that freight should be moved by rail.
Tax based on weight to 4th power would work if we nationalized railways like roads.
Only if rail can figure out their shit and hire enough workers and give them all time off. Too many train derailments from precision scheduled railroading.
There’s no need to have the tax be the exact same for every vehicle class. Proper long haul trucks have to be heavy, private cars do not.
The US already has 8 or 10 different vehicle classes defined by weight, the lightest being 6000lbs (which is still ridiculously high, my VW Up is 2200lbs).
As a truck driver, I would like to ask, how would you acquire all the “stuff” you have bought over the years? I am reasonably sure most of it was not produced locally to you. And the raw materials almost certainly aren’t locally sourced. Trucking and logistics generally has its issues, and you only have glimpsed a fraction of them, but it is absolutely necessary for modern society. Unless you’re proposing we kill off 2/3rds of humanity and go back to hunter-gatherer. Not a fan of that idea.
So? That money is still coming from somewhere. If the freight industry can’t afford to pay then it means we are subsiding them CURRENTLY. They by the very nature of capitalism deserve to go out of business
Trucks already pay a lot more in tax and regulatory expenses. In my state, annual car registration is $30-ish. Annual registration for a full-sized 18-wheeler is $1350 for the truck and $30-300 for each trailer. They also have to pay annual fees at the federal level which can be $600+/year, and an additional fuel tax on top of the existing state sales tax on diesel which I don’t know the rate of right now. All of that applies to every single power unit and trailer in a fleet.
Trucks should be taxed much higher than cars, but too many people don’t know or just don’t care that this is already the case, and it has been this way since the 1940s.
They are taxed a lot. Are they taxed to the fourth power of axel weight? Not even close.
I think you make want to go the other way. Making tires more expensive wont make people choose smaller cars, they will choose worse tires. And then they will crash into you because they cant stop.
It’s a good rule not to make essential safety items more expensive. Because consumers in general will always choose a cheaper, less safe option.
They’ll still have to replace them more often or won’t be able to drive their vehicles or pass a state inspection to get their annual registration completed unless their car is road-worthy, thus costing them more money in tickets and remedies of said ticket.
I think he is close though with his initial train of thought. I remember doing some research on this many years ago and road wear does not scale linearly with weight. All other variables being equal a 1,000lb load going across a stretch of road 10 times does less damage than a 10,000 pounds load going across the same stretch once. So what we should really be doing is looking at semi trucks and the heaviest of consumer vehicles. It would theoretically make consumer goods go up in price a little, but it’s not like that cost isn’t already being paid/subsidized by consumers in other ways.
Maybe it would even push the use of railroads for goods even more than it is used now.
ah yes, another anti-environment tax. More barriers to fossil-fuel free adoption. As you would expect, Mississippi already has this tax. Don’t be like Mississippi.
In the country I reside, everyone pays for the roads through income tax. Vehicle owners pay emissions tax. I think this is fair since everyone relies on the roads even if they never travel down a road themselves.
An alternative idea that I mentioned on a thread yesterday about vehicles with high bumpers, adjust the license class system to be more strict regarding vehicles. You already have to have extra training in a different license to run transport vehicles or semi trucks you should have to do the same with large vehicles, I’m not saying ban every pickup truck out there because I fully agree that trucks are a hard requirement especially in snow covered States like mine but there is a difference between having a pickup truck and having a monster truck at least in my opinion heavier or taller than low end transport vehicles
Agreed, there’s also plenty of people who think that just because they have a large vehicle, that they’re immune to the snow. Obviously there’s a quantity of snow that trucks are more necessary for, but I’ll admit to feeling a bit smug when I see ditches full of abandoned trucks and SUVs, as I drive by in my little front wheel drive sedan.
Every mile an EV drives is already taxed as we already tax electricity consumption. There is no reason to add a tax for something already taxed.
That depends on if the tax is sufficient to cover the societal costs of driving that mile or not. Not every use of electricity degrades public infrastructure to the same extent, so if the maintenance burden an EV adds is more than what the electricity tax brings in, then additional taxes to make up the difference would make sense.
Yeah well let’s quit making 7000 pound consumer vehicles. Small EVs would be more efficient and better for the environment because they need less materials to build and and less energy to recharge.
Judging by the general trend I don’t think this is happening anytime soon. The overall car industry is obsessed with even bigger cars.
And even in Europe it is sickening to see those half buses on our roads. And this is especially true for big cities, where parking space is very limited and usually those cars occupy park space for 1.5-2 cars.
And knowing that the fertility rate is really going down I wonder what justifies those cars.
That’s because the USA subsidizes bigger trucks as “work vehicles”. This practice needs to stop and they need to be taxed more than smaller vehicles.
State vehicle registration where I’m at is based on vehicle weight. Costs about $400 to renew the registration on my daily driver and $600 to renew for a larger truck. Motorcycles are only like $80 to renew.
Consumers are being taxed more for larger vehicles, it’s the manufacturers trying to avoid safety regulations that are seeing the cost benefits.
That’s because the USA subsidizes bigger trucks as “work vehicles”.
Can you cite this? Don’t get me wrong, I understand that if it’s actually a work vehicle you probably get some tax credits/breaks, but I highly doubt many consumers are getting these breaks for buying large vehicles.
I’m guessing you don’t actually pay attention to the tax law, then. Annual vehicle registration (aka, a vehicle ownership tax) is more expensive as the weight on the vehicle goes up. Vehicles over a certain weight limit require more complex and strict drivers license classes (granted, class B starts at 26,001 lbs which is way higher than even today’s heaviest consumer cars), and any vehicle used for work has higher insurance and regulatory costs, regardless of the size.
Buying an F350 (a truck that really only has a place in very specific situations anyway) requires so much extra work and almost always requires a class B license because of the kind of work being done with it. People who choose to get something like that because of small-dick syndrome are idiots. And that’s coming from a person who used to drive 18-wheelers and still has a compact SUV as my daily driver.
The EPA under the Obama admistration enabled this. I was surprised to learn this. It needs to change. I think trains need to change too.
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Small PHEV’s would be ideal for the current generation. Battery advances will come, but we should always try to optimize with the current technology and 10 cars with a 10th the battery of a Tesla would be better for the future.
My 2016 Nissan Leaf is 4400lbs, which is more than my larger (but still not that big) 2016 Mazda CX-5 at ~3500lbs. Both manage to fit my family of 5, but the Leaf is far less accommodating and it weighs a good deal more. Small EVs are still pretty substantial. A Kia EV6 which is roughly the same size as my CX-5 weighs 5500lbs. You add a lot to a vehicle when you add an EV battery.
Yeah but I’d like to visit my family and the nearest charging station is halfway across the state
If you are unable to find a charging station at some point halfway across the state you’re either being too picky, or blind. I live in the middle of nowhere Maine and I can still find at least one electric vehicle charger per major town. Hell there is three of them in the town next over and it’s not even considered one of our highly populated towns. I thought the same that you did until I actually looked up where charging stations are located I was pleasantly surprized
I live in Wyoming, having been to Maine, yall have an amazing and beautiful state but your definition of bumfuck no where is lacking. I checked the EV map again the ENTIRE QUATER of the state I live in that doesn’t have a single charger is where my family lives. I down south near Colorado for reasons I don’t want to get into right now but I want to be able to actually visit my family without having to take a plane between the two airports in Wyoming.
I live in Wyoming, people not from here have a hard time understanding how desolate it is here. If I were to switch to an EV I’d have to take a plane everytime I wanted to visit my elderly mother, who would send a cousin in her ancient f-250 to drive me around, because there isn’t a single electric charger in that QUARTER of the state
Could be a student or military or live in an apartment.
Not sure any of those establishments are going to be thrilled with you running an extension cable across the parking lot or sidewalk to charge your car.
Also pretty sure they meant their family lives outside of the range of a single EV charge and there’s no charging infrastructure on the way. What would be an 8 hour drive to visit family for the holidays turns into a multi-day trip with a stay at a motel/hotel to wait for your car to charge.
Lighter vehicles should be able to have the same range as larger ones, just have to find the right battery/weight/range combination.
Yeah the current weight/range/battery combo for me in my almost entirely rural state is an ICE vehicle as much as I like EVs they just can’t get me where I need to be with the current infrastructure. Unfortunately my attempts is also revoking its green energy tax stuff, got to love Republicans. But at least we got rare earth metals now, so that means nothing has to change! (God I love my state but hate the people running it)
Without doxing myself, from my hometown the nearest charging station is 30 miles away, that’s not end of the world far its definitely feasible but its not good enough. Especially when there’s gas stations everywhere. Charging stations need to be in way more places outside cities before they become appealing to folks living outside built up areas.
Tldr most guard rails are designed to stop vehicles under 5000lbs. Passenger vehicles are starting to exceed that, and EVs can weight 30% more than ICE vehicles.
How about keeping the guard rails as they are and let the fat car drivers carry the risk?
Even US drivers are not quite heavy enough to make a significant difference here. This has to do with car battery weights.
That’s 3175 kg for non-free folk. My car has around 1600 kg. 7k pound car is a fat fat cow.
People are saying “it’s all the electric cars and batteries…”
Yeah my VW ID4 which is a pretty decent sized electric car is 2003kg. You are looking at giant electric SUVs or electric trucks to get over that 3175kg. Even the cybertruck is only 3k and that is just a giant chunk of steel and battery. They must be including hauling weight in that…
It’s the battery, and the support frame to carry the weight of the battery safely. Like it or not - cars are getting heavier.
It’s a big fat fucking truck or luxury suv with a battery. A normal sized electric car is a thing too, you know. Electrics will always need to be heavier than ice of same size and model, but that doesn’t mean it needs to weigh 3000kg. Car are growing heavier and bigger not just because of electrification, but because of growing fragile egos and growing fears in a vehicle arms race.
Trucks and SUVs are getting heavier to skirt emissions controls.
In 2010 the Obama administration passed laws tightening emissions control requirements for new vehicles. But the laws were written to allow emissions as a factor of vehicle size, larger vehicles were allowed to have more emissions.
Unfortunately, the plan backfired. Instead of reducing emissions, vehicle manufacturers just started making vehicles bigger.
It isn’t primarily the fragile egos that are driving sales of these vehicular monstrosities. It’s corporate profits and greed. Manufacturers aren’t making smaller models because they don’t make as much money on them, not because there isn’t a market for them.
A little bit, yes. The electric version of my current car is only 200kg heavier. For context, it’s a small, compact city car.
But cars are getting huge in general, EV or not. A current gen VW Polo is bigger than an older VW Golf. All the while the Polo is (still is) the smaller brother of the Golf.
The F150 lightening weighs about 6,893 lbs. That’s before you put a load in it. I’d guess a load of pea gravel or similar would push it over that max weight of a guard rail. Hook up a horse trailer to it? Definitely. For the record, the F150 is the best selling consumer vehicle in the US and I doubt that’s going to change too much. I appreciate the people in here saying “not all electric cars”, but there’s absolutely electric vehicles already on the road pretty dangerously close to this max weight. The Rivian truck weighs in at over 7K lbs (7,148 lbs). The Tesla cyber truck weighs in at 6,603 lbs. These vehicles have load space that can accommodate heavy loads. Their curb weight is dangerously close to (or in the case of the Rivian over) the limit that our guard rails can safety buffer.
America has a lot of problems with things like the “Chicken Tax”, and the NHTSA regulating automakers for the purposes of higher mile per gallon vehicles, which has started and continues a trend of making larger and larger vehicles with intent to circumvent those regs and make more profit. The whole system is a bit broken, honestly.
Just get an even bigger car, it will keep you safe from those.
The country-fried truck endorsed by clowns!
Somehow I hadn’t seen it before. Thanks!
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I mean… kind of?
10 or 20 years ago? I would never have driven an SUV and thought anyone in one is stupid.
Five or six years ago? I needed a new car and ended up getting a “crossover” (so basically a hatchback on a lift kit). Still tiny compared to a lot of the cars on the road but a lot bigger than what I ever expected to drive.
Because in a sedan (like my rental a few months back)? My head is literally at bumper level for a LOT of the vehicles on the road. And now we have shit like the cybertruck where the bumper is a jagged metal wedge. I have a lot of faith in modern safety specs but that is still terrifying. In my small suv? I am still grill height for a lot of trucks but at least I am not weaving around monster trucks in a clown car.
Don’t get me wrong. I very much enjoy the increased ground clearance and ability to haul an entire car worth of camping gear comfortably. But I also know that I am “never” going to go smaller. And… that is kind of the problem. People are dragged kicking and screaming because the alternative is to feel like you are going to die the next time someone decides they are going to ignore a red light.
That it’s a arms race doesn’t make it better for society as a whole. It sucks.
Agreed.
But also? I care a lot more about me and my loved ones than a nebulous “society”. And I am not going to drastically increase risk to me and my partner in the interest of standing on principle*. Especially when “society” continues to get giant pickup trucks on lift kits with fucking spikes for bumpers.
*: Although, I WILL be one of those weirdos who does a LOT of research on fuel economy and efficiency so that I can feel better about technically driving an SUV.
I didn’t realize until now, but I’ve been very fortunate to be able to take the bus to work recently, and the lack of fear of other vehicles on the road is probably a huge contributor to how much better I feel after the commute. I have that anxiety ever-present in the back of my mind while driving a sedan.
It’s honestly ridiculous. My sedan was totaled last year after being rear ended at a red light at maybe 5mph by a big fuck off truck. Minor cosmetic damage to their bumper, completely crushed the rear frame of my cat.
Thankfully, no one was hurt beyond bruising, which is the most important part.
Part of that is by design and is crumple zones. EVERYONE makes fun of “whiplash” but people really do underestimate the kind of injuries caused by even a simple rear ending. And if your car got that fucked, it was probably for a good reason.
Of course, then we also have assholes who want cars without crumple zones to drastically increase damage to other vehicles. But… yeah.
I’m of the opinion that putting small cars way up in the air as CUVs ruins the driving so much it makes people worse drivers.
Or maybe it’s just that every CUV I see driving acts like they don’t know where they are or what they’re doing.
I think that more has to do with the cabin design.
I personally drive a Subaru Crosstrek which is literally a Subaru Imprezza on a lift kit. So I have good visibility and have gotten used to the blind spots that my frame creates and know to lean forward a bit when approach a roundabout or intersection to make sure a car isn’t coming in from the left at approximately the same speed as me. Same with changing lanes on the highway (and knowing that the headrests on my back seat completely block vehicles in my rearview mirror…).
That said, my rental a few months back (it might have been a Camry? I forget) had a HORRIBLE interior and my blindspots felt massive because so much of the frame obstructed my view. Some of it was that I only had two or three days to “get used to it” but the frame genuinely meant I could not see traffic when I was doing tighter merges on the highway. Again, I know that means I physically move in my seat but a lot of people never learn that or are used to “check your blindspot” just meaning looking slightly farther back when glancing at a mirror. So they kind of just start changing lanes and get honked at or suddenly see the vehicle they are about to pit maneuver and need to quickly swerve back.
You seem ambivalent about the topic. I understand your arguments, but I don’t agree with your solution. That doesn’t need to bother you. We probably have very different requirements for transportation.
I live in an area where I don’t need a car to get where I want to - bike, bus and train are sufficient. And I don’t normally need to transport so much that I need a car. And if I need a car I get a rental for a short time.
Sometimes I shake my head a little in disbelief because I find the trend towards more individual transportation within large cars concerning. But then again my lifestyle isn’t for everyone and who am I to judge? (But I’m entitled to my own opinion. ;)
Extremely few Americans live in a place where that is even possible. Few can afford to move to a place like that because they are so rare and desirable. Your comment is not helpful.
Same here, drove hatchbacks and sedans until 5 years ago and now have a crossover. It was good for a bit but now these new pickups and SUV headlights are right in my face again. Thinking installing a suspension lift and larger profile tires in the future. I do not want to drive a giant rectangle and can carry extra cargo if needed on my roof rack or cargo basket.
Odd I feel the opposite. I want something small and can change quickly to get me out of danger vs trying to be too big for danger.
I mean… good luck dodging someone who completely ignores a stale red and just floors it through an intersection (almost got jackknifed by one of those dumbasses just last week…) or someone who decides they want to merge into your lane and don’t care that it is “bumper to bumper” on the highway.
Defensive driving is about minimizing the likelihood of a crash while acknowledging some are just unavoidable. Hollywood stunt driving is the idea of being able to swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid getting pti maneuver’d.
