Testimony at the Legislature in Olympia is indicating that a major front in the culture wars may be forming around a seemingly benign object: the electric car.
I know, some of you are rolling your eyes. They’re fast and cool and battery operated, what’s the big deal?
But just the side issue of how to pay for the state’s highways, as more electric cars eat up the state’s gas tax revenue, is prompting some incendiary public reaction lately.
“This is not … un-American,” a driver lashed out at a bill that would require car owners to report their odometer readings annually so the state can implement a pay-per-mile tax .
“We are over 3,000 very angry taxpayers and we are against this bill!” said another.
“This is an insult to our dignity and our freedom,” said a third witness about being asked to report his annual mileage. “I will encourage mass default.”
What the state is grappling with, and the public is getting excited about, is the looming end of the internal combustion engine. Obviously we are very far from that. But make no mistake: when it comes to cars, it’s already starting to happen.
Washington just passed a threshold where less than 80 percent of new cars sold were gas-only (meaning neither electric nor battery hybrids). In recent months, the number has been 78 percent, according to the state Department of Licensing. Just three years ago, more than 90 percent of new cars sold were gasoline-only.
If electric car adoption only continued at current growth rates, about half of all new cars sold in the state would be electric by the end of the decade.
The state is then under pressure to find a new way to pay for the roads, since those drivers won’t pay the 49-cent-a-gallon gas tax. Lawmakers seem determined to institute a pay-per-mile scheme. But the problem is, there’s no good way to track how many miles everyone is driving.
You need to track it with GPS or have people self-report their mileage. Refer to the testimony about the indiscreet mileage readings of the cold, dead driving gloves.
We all track our phones anyway, right? So the state assumes that we will all get used to having our driving monitored eventually. But one witness, Kelly Wright of Marysville, said the real problem isn’t Big Brother concerns. It’s just that Washingtonians drive about 62 billion miles a year, and keeping track of all that is going to be incredibly expensive.
“It turns out that the gas tax was one of the best ideas ever,” Wright told lawmakers. “It costs the state virtually nothing to collect, and it’s virtually impossible for drivers to cheat.”
A study of pay-per-mile pilot projects in six states found that administrative costs ranged from 5 to 40 percent of total revenue. (The 40 percent figure was for a 2017 test in Oregon.) In Washington’s various road user fee experiments, collection fees averaged about 10 percent.
But gas taxes only cost about 0.25 percent to collect. So we’re looking at a new system that could be anywhere from 20 times to over 100 times more expensive.
I’m all for a good culture war. But not if it increases government waste and prevents accelerating the transition from fossil fuels.
The easiest and most efficient way to get electric car owners to pay for the roads is to charge them a flat rate each year when they renew their tokens. This is what the state is already doing, without provoking a great struggle or bloated bureaucracy.
There are 8 million vehicles in this state that collect about $1.2 billion a year in gas taxes, an average of $150 per vehicle. So an annual “road maintenance fee” on electricity wouldn’t even have to be that big to replace the lost gas tax. No surveillance, no fight. (Well, I’m sure Tim Eyman would like a word, but what else is new?)
The only change I would make is to charge a sliding scale based on a car’s weight. Heavier cars are more dangerous and wear out roads faster, and are worse for the environment.
Tracking people’s mileage is an unnecessary political mess. If we’re going to have a culture war, let’s at least have one over something worth fighting for: the sheer size of American cars.
