There was
a bill working its way thru the legislature in Florida to impose a yearly tax on EVs. The proposal was for a tax of $135/yr for the EVs. It
never made it out of committee in 2021 but is likely to be reintroduced.
The thinking is that those with a gas car are paying a gasoline tax with every fill-up which funds road infrastructure. Those with EVs and to some extent hybrids are getting to use that infrastructure for free. Consider if there were a toll bridge but EVs didn't have to pay a toll.
Shouldn't EV owners pay their way? I did a quick calculation based on averages of
11,000 miles/yr for each driver in Florida and an average $0.55 per gallon
Federal/state/local gas tax. Using a
guesstimate of the typical gasoline fueled car/truck of 22 mpg each vehicle is paying
11000 miles/22 miles/gal = 500 gallons * 0.55 dollars/gal = $275 per year in taxes paid by a gasoline fueled car. If anything the proposal was far too low. This calculation is for pure EV's. How to handle hybrids which use some electric and some gas also needs to be evaluated.
No gas, no squeegee
With our crumbling roads, bridges, and infrastructure we will either need to move away from the idea of a user fee and make paying those costs just part of our overall tax policy or figure out a way to make non-gasoline users share the expense.