Act Now: Georgia Electric Car Buyers Could Get The Shaft, Lose $5,000 Incentive & “Gain” A $200/Year Fee

24 thoughts on “Act Now: Georgia Electric Car Buyers Could Get The Shaft, Lose $5,000 Incentive & “Gain” A $200/Year Fee”

• Well, we might as well just get used to it as electric car owners. States (and the fed) refuse to raise gas taxes, so they have to make up the money somewhere. The best would be a fee on how many miles you drive a year, but the privacy freaks would, well, freak out.

  • Many states already have annual inspection requirements. Mileages are recorded during the inspection.

    Paying for road maintenance based on amount of use makes sense.

    • But 18-wheelers cause 90 – 95% of the damage on our roads anyway. A single big-rig causes the same road wear as almost 10,000 LEAFs driving the same distance: http://www.vabike.org/vehicle-weight-and-road-damage/

      There’s no way the trucking lobby would let themselves actually pay for the damage they cause, so our crumbling roads and insane plans to tax EVs stand as a testament to the giant subsidy they receive from not taking responsibility for their actions.

      • However if trucking companies were forced to pay for the damage they cause then the costs would be immediately passed on to the consumer, a good case for rail haulage to make a comeback?

        • Exactly. Like I said, failure to charge trucking companies their fair share for damaging our roads has been a huge subsidy for them and tilted the market in favor of trucks over rail. Talk about the government picking winners…

          If you phased the charges in over a period of 10 years or so and coupled it with a comprehensive investment in improving our cargo rail infrastructure, the consumer wouldn’t feel the hit quite so much.

          Funny thing is, with fuel prices falling by half in the last 6 months, the consumer didn’t feel any benefit aside from cheaper fill-ups. I haven’t seen any reduction in grocery or consumer goods prices myself. So only the costs get passed onto consumers and hardly any of the savings it seems.

      • Different issue.

    • Works well in NZ.

• Something of a surprise. Normally, you would expect well-connected electric utilities to win legislative battles with more dispersed oil interests over electric vehicles, at least in a state with no oil production to speak of. Score one to ALEC. Perhaps Georgia Power and Light was just caught napping.

• What about increased fee for heavy vehicles that damage the roads more. This reminds me of what Paris did recently, and Beijing does a lot to reduce air pollution by reducing the vehicles on the road, but EVs are exempt from this. I guess it will take more air pollution in Atlanta for them to realize the benefits of EVs. This is so short sighted. What do they do about tourists driving through? Do they want to impact tourism dollars by requiring road usage fees?

• Just saw that Idaho has similar legislation pending which would impose a $150/year surcharge on electric vehicles and $100 surcharge on hybrids.

  • Someone should do a comparison with what ICEV drivers pay a year in road use taxes.

    • Federal gas tax is $0.184 / gallon

      Georgia fuel taxes is $0.075 per gallon plus 3% sales tax on the retail price.

      A 30 mpg car driven for 10,000 miles will use 333 gallons of gas.

      Total fuel tax paid is $86.25 plus $19.98 in state sales tax (for $2 / gallon gas prices) for a total of $106.23. However, the vast majority of that taxes goes to the feds and not the state, so this is some totally anti-EV legislation!

      • Idaho total gasoline taxes are 43.4 cents/gallon. Using your 333 gallons that’s $144.52.

        Georgia total gasoline taxes are 44.93. $149.62.

        Average US driving miles were 12,200 in 2014. Average mileage is 23.6 miles, not 33.

        Using 12.2k, 23.6 MPG and 43.4 cents/gallon $220.68 per year for Idaho and a $232.27 per year in Georgia.

        Whether the state gets all the gas tax or whether the federal government gets a share is a different issue.

        I’m not suggesting that at least some of the motivation is not anti-EV, but the numbers do not seem unreasonable. At some point EVs need to pay a use fee for roads. A fee based on mileage driven would be fairer.

        • The rest of the story is we are already paying $80 extra for an “Alt Fuel Vehicle” tag, this was supposed to make up for the gas tax. But the legislature has conveniently forgotten this deal from ~15 years ago and instead wants to charge this punitive amount, like we were driving Hummers. We would expect to pay something but $50/year or so would make more sense.

        • If that’s the case then the additional tax is over the top.

          I’d contact the Green Tea Party and make them aware of this additional tax. (And call it a tax.)

• Here in the UK EVs are exempt from Road Tax and London Congestion charge.

  • Which makes them an extremely good buy in London and the suburbs, but not so in the ‘regions’
    Strange that?

    • The £5000 incentive is national and the Road Tax exemption is also national. The Supercharger network is already well placed around the UK and getting better and better all the time and that is free at the point of use high speed charge for the life of the car. Plus any large hotel or restaurant has 3 Phase juice to offer a TESLA and they can also contact TESLA for a free wall charger or two. So what’s your point again ?

      • My point? People in London can benefit from the freedom from the congestion charge in London, given the aim of the charge is to discourage people from taking their vehicles into London then ithe exemption doesn’t make a lot of sense, far better to remove it and increase the £5000 incentive?

• The fact is, electric cars will cost the country less to operate than internal combustion cars, by huge amounts of money, when all costs are included. That means longer term costs related to the environmental damage the ICE’s cause, and the cost of war, to maintain supplies. I just don’t understand why America is tearing itself up over terrorism. Just stop buying oil.

  • Don’t forget cost to healthcare systems from car pollution delivered illness and disease.

• The idea that these Republicans are passing this bill out of a sincere desire to maintain road revenues is a laugh. They hate hippies and their electric cars, and love giving lefties the shaft. These are the same folks who, in their first year running the legislature, spent who knows how much to force everyone in the state with a “Give wildlife a chance” license plate to replace it: on the old plates, a picture of a heron in a wetland; on the new plates, a picture of an american eagle against a flag. Pissing off liberals is their sole motivation.

• When will the bill get signed into law?
  If I run out today and get a LEAF will I still qualify for the tax credit?

  • you have until july 1

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