this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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Electric Vehicles
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If you do it based on company estimates for wear at the time the car is sold, hello expensive tires! You are collecting 30k miles worth of taxes at once. The tax would be even higher on long wear tires! On top of that different states have wildly different amounts of tax they add to gas which will incentivize buying tires from out of state. I assume similar differences exist in the EU as a comparison. This tax would also be part of buying a car, since they come with tires.
If a tire gets ruined, you already paid the tax and get to pay it again to continue driving. Hello potholes and construction nails!
If you try to spread it out based on wear over time, that would be far harder to calculate than just checking the odometer.
Okay, the expensive tires thing is a problem. I did a little math.
Let's say you get 50K miles out of a set of tires. At 25MPG, with an existing fuel tax of $0.50/gal, switching that to a tax on tires would amount to $250 per tire for a set of four to equal out. You'd ultimately be paying the same amount, but attaching it to the tire would make that all come up front. And then, yeah, you'd have people driving out of state for tires (if neighboring states didn't do the same thing), as well as driving in to the state for the cheap gas.
Bah.
Note that most EVs get nowhere near that. The faster acceleration, higher torque, and heavier weight chew through tires.
So a flat tax on tires would results in EV owners paying more even though they don't damage the road significantly more than petrol vehicles.
Doubt
Most road damage comes from large vehicles like trucks and busses.