Iowa House votes to add fee for electric vehicle registration

It's a fee (not technically a tax) collected by local municipalities to fund road repairs. Typically in larger cities/urban areas. Here in Nebraska, Omaha collects a wheel tax, nearby cities do not.

 

i’ve Quoted it here before, it’s in the state bilaws a million miles in it might take a while to find.
I used it to bring a request for information to the DMV complaining that my one “alternative fuel vehicle” paid wheel tax while the other does not.

DMV said it’s correct and I need to in the future only ask questions (complain) to the county board not the DMV

 

Farm vehicles are primarily operated on farms and not on roads, thus the exemption. Semi-tractors have many more registration fees (orders of magnitude higher than the wheel tax you pay - a semi and trailer with GVW of 80,000 lbs pays $2,578.00). Pickups less than 8,000 pounds pay the fee - that's most pickups except duallies. Those over 8,000 lbs pay an increasing fee for every 2,000 pounds capacity, more money than the wheel tax.

 

I would say in this case they (and I'm sure it's been to court) have determined that the fee is related to the specific service of registering a vehicle. That's the same reason the EV charge is a "fee" and not a "tax."

Registration for my Prime in NE has fees for the following - title, plates, motor vehicle fee, DMV fee. Taxes were property tax and tire tax (different than a wheel tax, charged only for new vehicles).

Another difference is that state and local taxes may be deductible on federal taxes, where fees are not.

 

What fuel powers these vehicles?

 

I live in California, it is already more expensive to drive on electricity than gas. PG&E charges me 28C per kWh. Now they want to charge more......

 

Yes there is activity at the Federal level.
A few weeks ago I sat in on a BiPartisan Policy Center webcast meeting on Transportatiion infrasruture funding. Basically both Repubs and Dems are interested in funding infrastructure improvements, but there is disagreement on approach.

Repubs are completely opposed to the current gaso tax structure, because it means cars like Prii pay less tax becuase they get higher MPG. Repubs want to change to miles-driven road taxes. Basically, Repubs agree to increased road use taxes, but fuel efficient cars must pay the same amount of tax.

Repubs also want to more heavily favor PPP approach where the private company pays for the roads, and then collects tolls instead of gaso taxes. We do a lot of PPP for HOT-3 lanes here in Northern Virginia, so our approach got a lot of discussion. Also we do congestion tolling, where you pay up to $45 for a few miles if you are at peak rush hour and not in a 3-person car pool. We are also kicking hybrids and plug-ins out of free HOV in the HOT lanes. In Va. we have license plate approach for free HOV, so if you have a free HOV license plate from 2006. you are still good as long as you always buy a hybrid or plug-in. But the free HOV benefit is gradually getting killed because we are changing to HOT lanes (Lexus lanes, we call them) almost everywhere where it matters.

 

Mild tax compared to our annual car property tax in Virginia. We pay up to about 5% annual of car value, with a small discount on that.

Imagine owning a Telsa Model S here in Virginia vs. Maryland where you actually get a $3000 rebate for BEV. You could be paying about $20k more taxes here on a Tesla. But we do have a very wealthy area, so the Google guys own a few Tesli (sp?), I am told. But hurts even much more now, due to the SALT deduction limits. So Uncle Sam is no longer subsidizing Virginia's car tax.

 

That's nuts! Is 28C per kWh the normal rate or is there a 'surcharge' for charging electric vehicles? I hope the former. I really hope the utilities don't catch on that providing electricity for electric vehicles can be a money making endeavor ( i..e - surcharge the Kwh used for charging ).

Almost makes one want to install solar panels and a Powerwall and cut the cord...eh?

And is gas really $4 a gallon in CA right now? It is only $2.70 or so here in MN.

 

makes it a lot more cost effective, that's for sure

 

Nice chart. Thx for posting.

I looked further into the MN law and the $75 surcharge only applies to full electric vehicles. HEVs (Prius) and PHEVs (Prime) are excluded.

At least MN was sensible about it...

BTW - some nice info here : http://www.ncsl.org/research/energy/new-fees-on-hybrid-and-electric-vehicles.aspx

 

In California, the electricity rates are progressive - the more you use, the more you pay. My brother in LA pays 40 cents/KWh for the last KWh. There is a baseline, below which you pay less, then the more you use the more you pay. If you want your head to spin for a while, read this. At it's basics, high users subsidize low users.

Tiered Rate Plan (E-1)

Here is a recent bill for another relative in Silicon Valley.

 

Yikesa...Interesting.

By definition I guess that system penalizes BEV owners too since on average they use more.

 

There are two separate rate structures for EV's that charge about 12.5 cents/KWh on off-peak. But, if you do charge at peak times, you get killed on the rates.

Making sense of the rates

https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHEDS_EV%20(Sch).pdf

 

Our base price is 22C now for tier 1 which is 350-400kWh every month and I use all of them. So when I use more to charge the car the price for tire 2 is 28C or more than 40C for tier 3 in summer when temperature is around 100F. That's why I installed solar panel.

I check the PG&E bill, and their price jumped more than 80% in less than 6 years. I was charging $120/month in 2013 and now I need to pay $220+ for the same amount of electricity if I don't have solar.

And the bad news is that PG&E needs to further increase their price to deal with the lawsuits due to wild fires in 2017 and 2018.

I pay 7C/mile when I use PG&E electricity and 5C/mile when gas price was less than $3/gal not long ago.

Sounds ridiculous?