As the new transportation bill moves into the Senate, I wanted to calculate exactly how badly electric vehicle drivers are getting screwed. It depends, of course, on the MPG rating for the comparison vehicle. The best case for their assessment would be a vehicle with very bad mileage — say a big truck that gets 8 mpg. That truck has to drive 7,619 miles a year to pay the same amount of gas tax as the 100$ hybrid vehicle registration fee. It’s got to drive 15,238 miles in a year to achieve parity with the 200$ electric vehicle registration fee.

But how many vehicles get eight miles per gallon? The CAFE 2016 fleet average is 34.0 mpg. Comparing the electric vehicle registration fee to the fleet average, you’d have to drive 32,380 miles a year to hit parity on the 100$ registration fee. 64,761 miles to hit parity on the 200$ registration fee. There are plenty of cars that get better than 34 mpg — for a driver whose car gets 40 mpg to pay 200$ in gasoline tax, they’d be driving 76,190 miles a year!

According to the 2000 information from the Office of Highway Policy Information, Americans drive an average of 13,476 miles per year. An average driver needs to own a vehicle that gets worse than 8 mpg — 7.0749 mpg — to pay the same amount of gas tax as a driver who registers a Chevy Volt.

 

0.105	tax / gallon		0.105	tax / gallon		0.105	tax / gallon		0.105	tax / gallon		0.105	tax / gallon
8	mpg		15	mpg		25	mpg		34	mpg		40	mpg
0.013125	tax per mile		0.007	tax per mile		0.0042	tax per mile		0.003088	tax per mile		0.002625	tax per mile
fee	Miles to pay same tax		fee	Miles to pay same tax		fee	Miles to pay same tax		fee	Miles to pay same tax		fee	Miles to pay same tax
200	15,238.10		200	28,571.43		200	47,619.05		200	64,761.90		200	76,190.48
100	7,619.05		100	14,285.71		100	23,809.52		100	32,380.95		100	38,095.24