Electric vehicle registration fee

A new Kalifornia law that makes sense, electric cars get to help pay for road maintenance. A big surprise though when getting their registration renewal. Going to have a fee now for road maintenance, that's gonna hurt. Wonder how many will have a hard time to come up with the money.
Duane

 

Gas tax pays for that too so how much it the electric tax? I'm thinking is going to be a good bit cheaper in the long run with a yearly fee instead of every time you fill up.

 

Pretty much ruins one of the reasons of owning a electric vehicle. Still costs the same or more to drive the same distance so what's the point. Environment? *scoff*

 

Selling my Tesla now. All out of gravy.
Mike

 

Well if you do the math you'll pay at least 50% less in tax in about 20,000 miles of driving than a Tacoma. Now that does not include the price of gas either. Don't know what a kilowatt costs in CA but I'm sure it's a lot less than gasoline in overall picture. The techknowledge is increasing exponentially they are now flying electric aircraft and delivering goods in electric tractor trailers. Making energy by burning things is not sustainable.

 

Wonder how the fee can be equitably assessed? One set fee?
Duane

 

It's like 235 to register one here now. Normal cars are 151. Electric was like 35 last year before the latest round of cash grabbing

 

The fact electric owners are not paying their fair share of road maintenance is a problem that needs to be addressed. This is a good thing.

As far as environmental stuff goes, most are surprisingly ignorant of the open pit mining required to mine the materials that make batteries. I’ve talked to a couple of people who didn’t see that as a big deal yet were firmly against the same for coal.

Too many freebies for EV owners is the bottom line.

 

Registration (total) fees are based on the value of the vehicle. So $235 is probably the old value plus the new fees (average is $65).

 

Next new fee on registration will be Electric Vehicle battery recycle fee or disposition fee subsidized by the Fossil Fuel drivers. Watch, been here for 77 years and know how CA operates

 

hiker duane used to take public transit, but then everyone started to wear headphones on the bus and he no longer had daily anti california political debates on his way to the library for his daily free paper reads.

not one to be held back, duane bought a tacoma and now drives to the library and uses the fancy interwebs to link up with his community forum of choice and start his daily rants about the california political cash grab.

we let him have his fun though, and dont have the heart to let him know there is no k in california...

 

Open pit mines are quite different from blowing the tops off of mountains for coal. But that's not what we're comparing to anyway unless you have a coal burning engine. Regardless, coal is actually barely better than wood in terms of energy density, causes needless environmental damage and provides an insignificant amount of jobs at a high risk to the workers.

But we aren't talking about coal, we're talking about EV's. The overall environmental impact of manufacturing EV's is in fact greater than traditional ICE vehicles. However, it is generally agreed that the overall environmental impact of EV vehicles is less than that of ICE over the lifespan of the vehicle. But it is also confounded by what your energy source is for charging your EV. Wired did a good article about it a few years ago.

Regardless, the greenest thing you can actually do is to keep your existing vehicle and use it less. Turns out it's also cheaper to do that. But if you are in the market for a new car, then an EV is still a greener option, and definitely greener than a coal burning car

 

No that's a federal mandate been in effect for years the ideal is to keep the lead in this country it's the same as a gas vehicle battery that has a shorter life span.

 

I'm on the right coast by a quick search electric cars are cheaper in CA to register and they don't need oil changes!

 

An easy way would be to to charge retroactively for the mileage driven in the last year. "The Crown" could calculate that the EV fleet uses an average of X kwh/mile then assess a kwh fee. You would have the mileage posted from the last year's renewal so it would just be a basic subtraction from the current mileage.

That would also ostensibly create a consumer demand for even more efficient EVs since then the kwh/mile average would decrease

 

My whole reason for going electric is how cheap it is to charge at home. EVs on the road should have to pay for its use. Not sure how it gets figured out. I’ll check my reg to see if there is anything different when it’s due.

 

I wasn't referring to the energy density of coal vs wood but the environmental damage caused by open pit mining-which you've pointed out. Most people have no idea that mining lithium is required for batteries or that like coal, lithium mining has toxic material implications. The same could be said for the production of steel, etc. for that matter.

Listen, I don't think any of what I've said should be taken as my disapproval of electric vehicles. ICE had a lot of the same challenges in the beginning (fuel distribution, range, etc). I do believe they offer a lot of very positive benefits-the industry is still young and it still has a lot of very talented engineers. I just want people to understand these things aren't 100% of the panacea they've been made out to be.

One of my favorites is the Drako. Like the Rivian, it's got some pretty sweet control over the 4x electric motors.

Something else we tend to forget is our electric grid is already strained and creating additional demand means suppliers will need to start making improvements-but that's another whole problem for a different day

 

Actually, some do. Some EVs also have cooling systems that need coolant replacement as well.

 

Many of us spell our state with a "K" to emphasize the craziness. Get my views from the redneck radio out of Susanville.
Sorry, have paid my way all my life.
Duane

 

Oh the humanity! Blasphemous

See what I did there?