Texas EV Tax: Please Comment

Rent isn't much relief. The market rent for that house would be around $6,500 a month.

 

What one is paying for when a simple tract home costs so much is the land the home is on. Basically, it is in an expensive neighborhood, even if that particular home is quite modest. There are a lot of much cheaper, but still respectable, neighborhoods in urban California areas (Los Angeles/San Francisco/Sacramento), let alone if you go into the smaller towns of the Central Valley.

 

That's why I don't live close to my job and why I own a Prime

 

Our move to a state where that same house would only cost 10%-20% of the prices in LA.

 

Price is irrelevant. Median home price/median salary is key. I don't care if a house costs $49 billion if I'm making $10 billion a year. The problem with all the "affordable" places I've ever found is that the cost of housing in relation to what jobs are paying isn't really much different than California.

For example, hordes of people moving to Austin, TX. The median home price is $425,000 and the median individual income is $39,418. Therefore, a median house in Austin costs 10.78 times median income. My house here in California only cost me 6.3 times my income. I would be financially devastated by moving to Texas.

You can make the argument that Austin isn't affordable any more. Amarillo has a median individual income of $29,382 and a median home price of $157,247. That's a ratio of 5.35, which is much closer to what I have now, but a lot of other things are similarly priced around the country. I'd have much less disposable income. I just can't make it work financially even with massive equity, or I'd have been all over it years ago.

 

friend of ours sold her house here for $1.6m and bought a similar one in austin (according to her and pictures) for $600,000
she's retired, so no income change

 

No matter how cheap it is, it is still Texas though.

 

Ban gas guzzling SUVs and trucks first. More impactful.

 

I believe texas taxes the ev's because their infrastructure having trouble powering houses much less EV's. Hell even EV companies get it.

Texas loses to Oklahoma on electric vehicle company Canoo’s ‘mega-factory.’ The power grid cited as one reason

 

An electrically heated house uses 10x-100x the energy required to drive an EV

Nobody seems to worry about the infrastructure to force all homes to being electrically heated
But Texas is doing just that building large inefficient homes using mediocre cheap electric heating systems

 

And then not paying to winterize their energy grid.

 

There's a bunch of mentally challenged people pushing California to outlaw natural gas heating in new constructions in favor of electrical. They're doing it In the name of global warming, of course. I think these are the same type of people who go door to door after hurricanes, fires, tornadoes, and other disasters selling home repairs and then disappearing with the money. I suspect they're electric utility lobbyists seizing the opportunity to incorporate the public's concern over a major issue into a plot to line their pockets.

Even using California's heavily-renewable power mix heating with electricity emits three times as much carbon as natural gas before even accounting for transmission losses. Even better, though, is electric heat costs up to 15 times more per BTU than natural gas heat.

 

Heating how? Resistive heat is going to be awful, but even small home heatpumps are closing in on 4x the energy efficiency of resistive these days.

Some gas is going to be burnt to heat the homes, no doubt. If it can be burnt centrally there will be better overall fuel efficiency vs. lots of little individual burners. Also a lot easier to monitor & control the emissions from one big burner.

If you go that far, you've got one less reason to build in a gas network in a given housing development. There's got to be benefits in the reduced fire risk and reduced construction costs too.

Admittedly an individual gas furnace is pretty cheap compared to a quality heat pump, that's a point the other way.

 

Many homes in Texas are using restrictive electrical heating, because the equipment is cheap.

New construction in California will likely require heat pumps. It is also much cheaper to put in geothermal heat pumps with new construction.

 

Doesn't matter for the requirement as far as I know, as long as it's electrical.

Burning enough natural gas to generate 10,000 BTU of heat in the home generates about 1.3 lbs of CO2 with a 90% efficient natural gas heater. Burning enough natural gas to generate enough electricity to generate 10,000 BTU of heat generates about 2.7 lbs of CO2. Burning enough coal to generate enough electricity to generate 10,000 BTU of heat generates about 6.5 lbs of CO2.

Since most heat in California is needed at night, solar and wind aren't going to help. Even if they did, you'd have to have at least 80% of your power coming from them if your other source is coal just to match the CO2 emissions of natural gas home heating. Good luck.

Using the number of therms I used in the coldest month of last winter and converting that to kWh results in 1,817 kWh of electrical use. That would have cost me around $417. My gas bill was $87.

The more decentralized critical infrastructure is, the better everyone will be. Centralized infrastructure is too tempting of a target for domestic terrorists whose main weapons are legislation and the police power of the state.

 

And using R4 insulation and running water pipes above ground into their garage and home ceilings that instantly flood when the temp drops below 32

 

Most homes built on concrete slabs in California have the plumbing in the attic, but I've never heard of anyone in the metropolitan areas of California suffering freezing pipes. The coldest it's ever been at my home in my lifetime is 28°, and that's for a few hours early in the morning. I assume Texas builders work with the same assumptions, but maybe they shouldn't.

 

Your calculations aren't accounting for the methane leaks that do happen, and will be greater with more homes using natural gas.

Wind can be available at later times than solar. California is also installing energy storage.

That's because of your electricity market. Same amount would cost me around $290.

 

Tripling heating prices is still absurd, but the ethical challenges of spending your money for you has never stopped any politician that I know of. Not only will I have to pay the difference, but there will surely be new taxes to follow to fund programs to make heating more affordable on account of the same politicians just having made it less affordable.

You have to love a government that will send law enforcement to your home with the message: "We've decided to spend more of your money to offset the consequences of our actions. If you don't cough up you're going to prison."

 

...under the current regime of petroleum subsidies anyhow...