Washington Considers EV Road Fee
By Scott Doggett February 14, 2011
Owners of battery-electric vehicles, such as the Nissan Leaf and the Tesla Roadster, not only don't buy gasoline, they also don't pay any of the fuel taxes that help support road maintenance. A proposed bill in the state of Washington attempts to fix that seeming unfairness. Because EV drivers use the same roads as other Washingtonians who presently pay a hefty state gas tax of 37.5 cents per gallon, State Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen thinks it's only unfair they also contribute to maintaining roads. Under the legislation she and others proposed, electric-car owners would pay a special $100 fee each year when registering their vehicles.
Haugen said the bill is meant to ensure that EV owners pay their fair share into the state's highway fund, which is supported by a gas tax. A similar measure died in the Senate last year. There eventually will have to be a way to get road taxes from alternative-fuel vehicles, and Washington might be the first state to come up with a reasonable solution.
At $100 annually, the amount certainly isn't excessive. At 37.5 cents a gallon, the owner of a gas-powered vehicle would pay $100 in state gas taxes after buying 266 gallons. That equates to 6,666 miles of driving for someone whose vehicle averages 25 miles per gallon. Most EV drivers in Washington state now likely don't travel more than that in a year. Analysts for the governor's budget office have calculated that the average owner of a conventional car or light truck in Washington pays $204 in state gas taxes annually.
The state's anti-tax activists claim the $100 would amount to a tax - not a fee - and therefore should be subject to an initiative approved last November that requires a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate for passage. At this time it's unclear whether the bill will make it out of the Senate, but some members of the House have already voiced their approval of the legislation.
The analysts have estimated that the number of EVs subject to the fee would increase from around 1,800 today to more than 8,900 by 2016 and would raise about $400,000 in 2013 and $1.9 million by the 2015-17 state budget cycle. The governor's proposed transportation budget for the next two years is $6.9 billion.
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