Electric Vehicles and taxes

[Aridon]

Check out Tesla’s power wall. https://www.tesla.com/powerwall

Very cool.

[Bamaman]

Toyota has sold more hybrids than all the other manufacturers combined. I bought a new generation Camry Hybrid a year ago, and fuel mileage averages 48 mpg @ 75 mpg on the road--and in the city. It's simply the car of the future with a 600 mile range.

I don't worry about state taxation as our legislature is too dumb to address such an issue. We still have 2 1/2% sales taxes on cars, boats & RV's and our property taxes are about 25% of our surrounding states. Because my wife is disabled, we have no property taxes on our main house with 5 bedrooms and 5 full bathrooms.

[Jerryr]

Our Leafs have Heat pumps for primary heat. The original and base units have resistive heat which draw lots of current.

[Jerryr]

That is pretty cool (isn't almost everything from Tesla?), and I'm sure solar+battery solutions will help in many parts of the country. It looks like I need 4 of them for a total installed cost of $30K plus the solar to feed them. I'd probably get really into all that if I was in "the house" I wanted to keep. I'm certain one of our next three vehicles will be an electric. The next one will probably be the new Toyota RAV4 hybrid.

I do think a per-mile-driven fee paid at annual registration is the easiest and most equitable solution. Apply it to all vehicles and then drop the fuel tax except for any portions that are meant to discourage/compensate-for hydrocarbon combustion.

Everything is from Tesla. They set up financing so your monthly payment is what your current average electrical bill is. Since ou are using 100% solar your electric bill drops to nothing so your net monthly out of pocket cost is Zero. The only issue is if you sell your house the buyer must take over the loan.

We are in our 70s so for us it didn’t make sense. If I was in my 40s and thought I’d be living in the house for 30 years I would consider it.

[howson]

Howard, that wasn’t my attempt, I apologize.

No need to apologize! Your thread is an interesting and appropriate topic. It's just when I read the posts my internal alarm bells started ringing. I ignored my instincts last time (and it didn't end well) so I want to get out front of any potential issue this time. My post was most certainly not directed at you.

By all means, let's discuss. I follow electric motorcycle development with keen interest, so the development of an electric tow vehicle...lots of challenges ahead.

[BabyBober]

I follow electric motorcycle development with keen interest, so the development of an electric tow vehicle...lots of challenges ahead.

That made me start thinking I worked on a promotional video back in the mid 80's for a company trying to raise funding a prototype electric motorcycle. I remember riding it and it went like a bat out of hell but didn't have a long range...

Jim

[howson]

That made me start thinking I worked on a promotional video back in the mid 80's for a company trying to raise funding a prototype electric motorcycle. I remember riding it and it went like a bat out of hell but didn't have a long range...

Jim

Motorcycle Consumer News (yes, that's a shameless plug for my favorite magazine) does a great job of regularly providing stories on the latest and greatest electric bikes. Even Harley Davidson has a prototype in the pipeline!

[Leon T]

In Arizona they have just implemented a $32 "public safety fee" which is added for each year of a vehicle registration. They left it up to unelected bureaucrats to set the fee and it came out almost double what they envisioned. Imagine that. This all has to do with funding highways and paying the highway patrol. They were taking money from highway funds to pay for highway patrol and now they say they are correcting that with this new "fee". Please don't call it a "tax", because they assure us it's not a tax. Vehicle registrations in Arizona already include a lieu tax and the yearly fees for a newer diesel pickup can exceed $1,000 a year.

All this to make up for shortfalls in road funding is what they're claiming. My attorney drives an electric Nissan, pays nearly nothing in yearly registration fees (I believe around $8), gets $7,500 tax credits for saving humanity, has free charging stations provided to him (gee, wonder who funds those) and laughs about it all the time.

Electric motorcycles? Hahahahaha. Can't wait to see how they emulate the V-twin rumble on an electric motorcycle. Motorcycle sales are already down because millennials don't like them as much as baby boomers. I guess we'll see if making them electric drives sales to millennials, but to me it seems dubious. I'll take my Victory Magnum with aftermarket exhaust all day long (even though Victory went belly up a few months after I bought it).

[T'boro Fisher]

Good old Illinois "discounts" the registration down from $85 a year on a car to $36 for 2 years on a Electric Vehicle. Great work if you can get it.

[minnow101]

It’s terrific how taxpayers subsidize electric’s with tax rebates and provide free electricity at many locales for recharging. On top of that, the rest of us pay fuel taxes so the electric’s can zoom around on public highways for nothing. Then you get your nose rubbed in by the greenies.