After years of pushing the green option, and offering all kinds of incentives to people to start buying electric and hybrid cars, a light bulb has finally gone off in the heads of some state legislatures, and they have started on a new 'Gollum' acting, lamenting about their precious revenues from gas taxes.
One estimate says that they will lose up to 25 million dollars in tax revenue from people driving hybrids and electrics. This doesn't even take in to account what they are going to lose as people start driving less or more fuel efficient cars with gas topping $4 a gallon. Heck, my wife and I have started swapping cars some days. If she doesn't have anything really 'planned' for the day, I will take the Subaru, and leave her the F-150. Realistically, the Impreza only gets about 26mpg, but that is better than the 'real world' 18mpg I get in the F-150. It saves 4-5 dollars a day, which I then turn around and spend on a latte, there-by bringing economic balance to the world.
Needing to get their hands back on their precious tax revenues, members of the legislature have proposed attaching a $100 fee each year to owning an electric car, so each person is responsible for paying 'their fair share' for road upkeep.
I'm not sure I like the idea of a flat fee, but it's better than what's was proposed in Oregon where the Governor wanted to use GPS to track peoples driving, and charge them accordingly by the mileage they were driving. It's not going over all that well.
Slightly less controversial than GPS tracking is a plan in some states to self-report mileage off your odometer each year.
Myself? I'm more in the pay for use club...if you've got a road that needs maintaining, then put a toll on it.
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