This is absolutely ponderous, man. https://www.foxnews.com/auto/illinois-1000-electric-vehicle-legislation It isn't going to bode well for pushing "cleaner" energy.
This is what I immediately figured. They are losing revenue on gas. If you try to back into their number, you could probably look at gas costing $50/week. That's $2600/year. They are probably charging Tesla owners the average gas tax collected but building it into the registration fee as a lump sum. They could've probably achieved the same effect by charging Tesla owners some fraction of the gas tax every month as an "electricity use fee" and no one would be the wiser. This was just poor politicking by Illinois.
Agree, have to pay for roads somehow and Illinois needs the money. You could also look at it like so far, EV owners have not been paying their fair share for road use. A Tesla Model S weighs between 4,769 to 4,941 lbs. That's more than a lot of full-sized SUVs. Road wear is highly correlated with vehicle weight.
This is a great point. These taxes pay to replace worn roads, and curb weight has a lot to do with the amount of wear a road experiences. This is far too shortsided and partisan. I don't like taxes either. However, in this case, it makes sense that Illinois has to figure out a way to charge EV drivers because the normal route of collecting taxes for roads and public works (gasoline) is not available for this cohort. It's important you disagree with someone because of the substance of the argument and not the letter after their name. Otherwise we end up how we are now where both sides of the aisle refuse to talk to each other.
What about taxes for the electricity used to power the cars? It's pretty funny how a democrat who believes in global warming would charge people more money for having a solar powered car
EV gets double benefits: Tax credit and no gas tax. Someone has to pay for road maintenance and constructions. Most funds come from gas tax.
Where I live, they are looking into ways to charge people by mile driven. Seems like that would be easy to abuse and perhaps a bit Orwellian, but it's probably the fairest system. What happens with the gas tax is that people with old cars tend to subsidize people with newer cars that get better gas mileage (based on gas taxes paid). A lot of hybrid SUVs will beat the fuel economy of economy cars from the early 90s, but do significantly more damage to the roads. So it becomes a bit of a "wealth inequality" issue since people with newer cars tend to have more money (or reckless spend) than people who have older cars.
%% Don't know. But ILL ,was #1, or waaay near the top of WSJ article ,on mismanaged pension plans...…………………….……………………………………………...