I have no data, but I suspect we underestimate the impact of at-home charging. Essentially, all vehicles parked at a residence start every day with a full charge. This eliminates most of the demand on fast-charge stations for around-town use.
Granted, they still consume power that the grid has to supply, so pricing may change, but I suspect gas station traffic will go way down, in aggregate, as EV adoption climbs.
One thing the government hasn't noticed yet (afaik) is that electric cars aren't taxed like gasoline cars. The per-gallon tax (which pays for important things like roads) is a substantial portion of the overall cost. Nobody factors that eventual cost in when they claim EVs are sooo much cheaper. They will probably continue to be cheaper, just less aggressively cheaper than Tesla claims.
> Essentially, all vehicles parked at a residence start every day with a full charge.
But as I pointed out, this causes a non-trivial rise in the demand for electricity at the home, and a consequent jump in electricity prices.
Somewhat relevant-- inflation and other economic problems have already caused a growth in car repos this year. And it includes both the mid-level and luxury vehicles. People who thought they could afford those massive "market adjustments" in the past two years are literally unable to make payments. And that's with banks really wanting to avoid doing the repos since the price at auction is already going to be significantly lower than those market-adjusted prices.
That is to say...
If EVs are produced at scale and home chargers installed at scale, a jump in electricity prices could lead to the same problem. In that case it doesn't matter how cheap EVs get, that electricity price jump is functionally equivalent to taking on higher monthly payments for the car. And someone in Dallas, Texas needs both a charged car to get to work and their home air conditioner running to not die. If things get tight then it's the actual car payments that have to go unpaid. And we'll be back in repo land again.
Some anti-EV states have realized this and have raised the registration cost on these cars substantially. This is less than the gas tax you would probably pay on normal commuting but I expect more states to follow this lead.
Most of the states that have introduced this fee are the states with low gas taxes, so EV owners end up paying substantially more in EV fees than an average user pays in gasoline taxes.
Not only have politicians noticed this, but the conniving little jerks have already started framing the problem in a way that implies EVs should be paying far more than gas cars.
Many states are pushing for tag fees based upon the average revenue per gas/disel vehicle per year without regard to those vehicles MPG. Given that a lot of EVs are replacing high MPG vehicles, the formulations are incredibly unfair.
But they still have a few years before EV owners are a substantial constituency, so there's a chance to jam through unfair taxation (in the false name of fairness) before that happens.
I am not a civil engineer, but it's frequently cited in these discussions that road damage goes up as a function of the 4th power of vehicle weight[0].
A Rivian R1T has a curb weight of 7148lbs [1], a 4wd Chevy Silverado 1500 has a curb weight of 4826 lbs [2]. I think an increased registration fee is more than fair. Hell, do it for all vehicles if you want to make it really fair. We drive far larger vehicles in the US than necessary.
> Many states are pushing for tag fees based upon the average revenue per gas/disel vehicle per year without regard to those vehicles MPG. Given that a lot of EVs are replacing high MPG vehicles, the formulations are incredibly unfair.
Is it, though? Does the taxation rate matter more than the total collected per year distributed by the number of users? If you aren’t counting/won’t count miles driven, this seems like a fair alternative. The idea isn’t to tax 21 cents a gallon - that’s the implementation detail - the idea is to collect $xx billion a year to (ostensibly) pay for transportation related costs.
To use a logical proof instead, assume all cars are converted to EV with the flick of a wand. Do you think your proposal would seriously last? The same amount (modulo some percentage) needs to be collected to pay for whatever costs are relying on that tax to be funded. The rate (not the total price) has to go up for EV users.
Now if gas at the pump included an explicit carbon tax then absolutely, that shouldn’t be ported over to the rate EV users are charged.
> Is it, though? Does the taxation rate matter more than the total collected per year distributed by the number of users?
I'd agree with that, if it were applied fairly. Drop the gas tax and switch to $/car across the board. Alternatively, develop a new formula based purely upon vehicle weight[1].
But instead, they just want EVs, including things like Nissan Leaf, to pay the same as the average. In my state, the average is a lot closer to an F-150 doing 15k/year than it is to a Corolla.
This is just punitive to the EV owner.
[1] As it is, mpg correlates strongly with weight, so gar cars effectively already get taxed based upon a combination of weight and miles driven. The challenge is to figure out a reasonable, non-punitive approach to doing the same for EVs. At least in "anti-EV" states, it is very obvious that there is no attempt to do that.
Yup, I have had an EV for 5 years and I now fast charge on the road only about 2x/year.
If you can charge at home, work, or both.. you will likely end up in a similar position.
Granted, they still consume power that the grid has to supply, so pricing may change, but I suspect gas station traffic will go way down, in aggregate, as EV adoption climbs.
One thing the government hasn't noticed yet (afaik) is that electric cars aren't taxed like gasoline cars. The per-gallon tax (which pays for important things like roads) is a substantial portion of the overall cost. Nobody factors that eventual cost in when they claim EVs are sooo much cheaper. They will probably continue to be cheaper, just less aggressively cheaper than Tesla claims.