Iowa House votes to add fee for electric vehicle registration

You're confusing relative and absolute. Overall number of cars increases. Road usage (and related wear and tear) also increases. Cost of maintenance increases faster than tax revenue.

 

so go ahead and increase gaso taxes to compensate for miles driven if you think that miles driven is a huge factor in road maintenance. I do not oppose charging plug-ins their fair share as an extra fee...

 

I think we have a case of en mass loss of critical thinking here. Comparisons of CA to WI or IA are meaningless


Here is why

Wisconsin and Iowa both have always had decentives for EV ownership, including special county level wheel tax,
ZERO Infastructure
Statistically ZERO plug in sales.
And an anti EV attitude and rhetoric on the subject , they give absolutely NO INCENTIVES WHATSOEVER TO EVs


California on the other hand gives thousands of dollars in incentives then makes you pay it back over a period of 10 years in the form of registration , big whup
California has extensive infrastructure and EV friendly people.
They have a small but statistically significant number of EVs in many areas.

Oil lobbies spend more money in California than any other state, whether the guy wears a D or an R does not make him immune to money.


Next, even my very liberal Aunt and Uncle lambasted me for owning an EV and my experience is that party affiliations have nothing to do with the regional EV hatred present,
I’ve had guys on the street come into parking lots visibly angered by my car.

As stated this has nothing to do with funding, the guy who wrote Wisconsin’s Prius tax has spewed hatred against smug Prius drivers since 2008 and his intent never mentioned funding until after the fact.
And his constituents love the fact that he blames women for rape and abortion, supports “good family values”, has a jacked up Jeep with a gun and deer mount, wants the DNR disbanded, wants to remove water table limitations, fought hard to reverse fines levied in a super fund scenario, played a big role in removing “rehab” funding in troubled youth and prison scenarios, reduced teacher salaries and removed union rights, wasted money on a Chinese conglomerate without placing assurances that they would hold up the bargain, and I could go on

Intent is more important than the words of the law and that is where the Midwest and West coast differ greatly

 

I live in Nebraska (pretty much dead center of the country), and I've managed to both buy and operate a PHEV here with no problems. I didn't count on the government to facilitate my purchase or ownership. And apparently, you were able to do the same with yours.

 

I’ve always owned an EV long before most,

The trouble was for many years I was THE ONLY EV owner in the county,

Most folks are not me and I have no desire to once again become the only EV owner in the county,

This is wrong headed legislation coming from a bad place

 

funny how people complain about government incentives when it comes to ev's and renewables, but you never hear them complain about fossil fuel incentives.
maybe i need to go to a gasser forum to see that

 

So EV's should get a free pass on road maintenance? That's all that bill is doing - replacing the revenue that previously came from one fuel (gasoline) with revenue from the alternate fuel (electricity). That seems perfectly reasonable to me. Just because i drive a PHEV doesn't mean I should get special treatment when it comes to public infrastructure. And that's how I testified at the recent committee hearings on this issue in the Nebraska Legislature. As did the Nebraska Sierra Club who also supported the EV registration fee.

 

Dude, now you pretty much contradict yourself.

I know any government action against EV owners triggers many of those owners no matter what, but please, exercise some common sense before rushing to keyboards.

 

Why was this a problem? At one time, I think I was the only 1985 VW Golf diesel owner in my county.

 

When there are 800 cars out of 1.2 million vehicles and my Insight pays about $38 a year in road tax, no I do not.
Most northern EV owners drive under 5000 miles a year compared to 10,000+ by folks who live in areas with charging infrastructure.

I am fine with gas tax increases but until there is a decent equitable way of charging fairly on energy used and there are more than
1 guy
owning the things I will stick with my view.


50% of my electric bill is in effect a tax anyway due to poor decision making by the state oversight committee in the early 2000’s to bolster profits by building uneccessary capacity and condemning hydro plants in the process


Educate yourself on municipal substation taxes, in some areas they can be very high even though they aren’t mentioned on your bill, as they are paid by the utilities directly.

Next EV registration taxes have devastated the Wisconsin market, if you actually want to see these cars make any real inroads these taxes have to either
1 wait until there is 10% plug ins on the road or
2 we will need a subsidy at the local level of some form

The average Joe won’t buy EVs unless they become well established and most average folks see the extra fee owed on a $5000 used EV and get a regular car.

That’s just the paycheck to paycheck attitude here.

 

I spent my second career in electrical utility, so I'm familiar with how they bill and tax. To the consumer, the only thing that matters for charging an EV/PHEV is the marginal cost of each KWh that goes into the vehicle. You can break it down into all its individual elements (and many utilities do so), but the total is what counts.

I doubt it. People buying a $30K plus EV/PHEV won't change their mind because of a small additional registration fee. Your own graph show EV registration going up, even as sales went down. That means people are buying them somewhere and registering them in Wisconsin. So, it isn't registration that is the barrier, it appears to be a sales problem. And, if people aren't buying $5000 used EV's, I suspect it is not because of the registration fees, it is because of the greatly decreased battery range (the same factor that led the first owner to sell it).

And they may not become well established in that area of the country. Maybe in the cities, but EV's aren't know for their prowess in snow, cold weather and hauling stuff. Throwing incentives at EV's won't change any of those factors.

 

There are only about 2300 EVs on Wisconsin roads, the red line marks where the high water mark for the on road quantity is going to likely plateau before falling.

Understand that Wisconsin in general imports used cars and relatively few new cars sell in this market, people buying “new” cars are few and far between regardless of propulsion.
Mode income is around $20,000 in most areas in Wisconsin, while the median continues to diverge upward as mode income stagnates.
“Household income “ is typically low 30’s until you move south and east.
Many “low income “ people that normally are not assumed to be BEV owners, own these cars in Wisconsin as you guessed around the southern Cities. In the Midwest, Wisconsin actually sold more used EVs than you would expect for a rural northern state.
This explains most of what I describe and why the large steady 3 year drop in sales after a good run up is disappointing.

Anyway,
The number of registered EVs on the road will eventually fall once vehicles start aging out.

The cars are new enough that they aren’t being wrecked out / sold out of state faster than new sales, give it another 3 years of low sales and the number on the road will plateau and work its way downward, slowly at first then plummet as the average EV age increases.

I already know one Milwaukee guy that sold his $5000 used IMiev he used 2 years for pizza delivery for a Mirage because of the tax.
I do not recall him having any complaints in how he used the vehicle or inadequate range, he was quite angry about the tax and traded in before his registration was due.

I know quite a few used IMIEV owners in state and most have the same view on the tax, several quit posting about their cars after the tax took effect.
Others (like Ben Nelson)
have been writing up the math and why $150+wheel tax+standard registration is a disappointing (unfair) amount to pay compared to a normal economy car.

Ah well, once a tax passes it can only go upwards from there

 

So, your conclusion is that the $100 fee per year ($8.33 per month) is killing sales. Let's do some quick math.

Wisconsin power rates from WPS site : after the fixed $21/month charge, it's $0.09970 per kWh. Round up to 10 cents/KWh. Then there may be some taxes on top of that, but the website doesn't show them that I could find.

Let's assume 10,000 miles per year driven. Less than national average but a round number. Gasoline vehicle getting 35 mpg (pretty good average for combined cycle). EV assume 4 miles/KWh. Wisconsin gas price averages $2.816 today.

Gasoline vehicle - 10,000/35 * 2.816 = $804.57 per year. Of that $94 is gas tax at the current rate of $0.329 per gallon.

EV - 10,000/4 * 0.10 = $250. Add to that the $100 EV fee and you are at $350. That's a lot less than $804.

 

I agree with this...especially in my area. I see FAR too many land barges and humongous diesel pickup trucks to think that vehicles are becoming more efficient overall. In fact, 'cheap gas' made many folks rationalize that a larger and *less* fuel efficient vehicle is the way to go. Gas prices do seem to be creeping up though. It will be interesting to see where the breaking point is this time.

 

Yet sales still dropped anyway timed perfectly with the tax implementation


Ben Nelson only drives 5000 miles a year, he came from a 2001 Honda Insight to an IMIEV

Per the dash of my Insight I am at a lifetime FE of 82mpg

Let’s figure this.

5000/80mpg * $0.37 = $23.12
Wisconsin Gas is an average this last year of $2.25
Gas cost $140.62 for the year

My former Cobalt has a lifetime average of 46mpg (see ecomodder garages for some examples)

So you could even double the cost to show the expense for a common 40mpg stick on the highway and you are still only at
$280 and $46

Yes the IMIEV as driven is more efficient than 4/miles per kwhr but the math leaves little to be desired with fixed costs including the wheel taxes

 

Compared to $225 for the EV ($125 for electric for 5K miles, plus $100 fee). $225 is still less than $280.

The half dozen owners of Insights in Wisconsin may not see a savings, but almost everybody else does.

The alternative appears to be to raise the gasoline tax overall - this would discourage the use of gasoline, increase road funding, and encourage more people to buy EV's. Everybody wins?

 

best idea, except to those hoping for reelection

 

According to this resource, EV sales were up in every state between 2017 and 2018, with the exception of Vermont which dropped from 871 to 824 in that time span. Wisconsin was up by about 375 vehicles, or 24%.

EV Market Share by State – EVAdoption

 

375 vehicles? mission accomplished

 

An increase of about 375 vehicles (actually 380) - Sales were 1,576 in 2017, and increased to 1,956 in 2018. Almost exactly on the median for all states for 2018 sales.

An increase of 380 is not a sales drop.