Sean Duffy, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the U.S. Department of Transportation, thinks owners of electric vehicles should pay to use roads.
“How to do that, I think, is a little more challenging,” Duffy said at his confirmation hearing Wednesday before the Senate Commerce Committee.
The former Republican lawmaker is correct that it would be a challenge to enact such a change that would affect owners of Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, and other EVs.
Federally funded road repairs are mainly paid for by taxes collected on diesel and gasoline. EVs don’t consume gas, which means they don’t contribute to fuel tax revenues. Some argue this creates a funding gap.
It’s not within the DOT’s power to make this change on its own. The agency would need to work with Congress to pass new legislation authorizing taxes or fees. It might, for example, amend the Highway Revenue Act, which was passed in 1956 and establishes a federal fuel tax. Today, it’s 18.3 cents per gallon.
Lawmakers would also need to come up with a new implementation framework, one that could potentially measure and report EV mileage or electricity usage. How to do this accurately and in a way that ensures privacy would be a technological hurdle. And such a fee would likely face steep opposition from environmental advocates and automakers.
In many states, EV owners already pay to use roads in order to compensate for the fact that they don’t contribute to fuel tax revenues. Some, like Georgia and Illinois, charge a flat fee (and in Illinois’ case that fee… Lasīt vairāk
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