Pciture has got to be from Houston as the only DC charger in Dallas doesn't look like that position at all (its in the back of a black asphalt parking lot.
The "road tax" via gas purchase is a concern to governments and transportation planners. Firstly, it really points out the archaic way of taxing via gas used. But I won't get into that. I honestly don't mind paying my portion since I am paying none, but I want it to be fair:
1) If issued by the state you could do either just state only or both fed and state, but it needs to be consistant and explained
2) The tax CANNOT be too high, i.e. the state of washington is proposing a $100 straight up cost. If this was texas that is way too high. I bought a fuel efficent car for a reason. I would pay almost as much for gas tax than a Prius would. That is NOT EQUAL!!!!!!!!
3) Base the tax off of the EPA MPGE efficiency. To me this is the only fair way. Yes we can get alot more but its hard to prove and more difficult for a government to implement. Just using the EPA MPGE (99 in our case) is a good start point. Take the 99 and either divide by the amount miles traveled (if they want to do that) or the average yearly miles traveled (I think its 15,000k - I am ok with that) and then times your gas tax rate to get a REAL #.
Obviously there are ways to make this more accurate but it takes more effort and calcuations. Just using the car's MPGE with 15,000k a year times the gas tax for the state gives a solid number. Putting some arbitrary cost is wrong. I feel like I am being punished for buying a fuel efficent car and helping the region meet air quality attainment.
Just an FYI, texas is a combined 38.4, using this basic formula, I would pay $58.18, which isn't much. In contrast a prius pays (using the same formula) $115.20. I honestly think these states trying to look at this are missing out millions of dollars. While its good to set things up now, they are actually not going to make that much money. I know for sure there are about 250 volts and leafs in DFW, pretending there are 250 in houston, 250 in austin-san antonio and nother 250 randomly, that's about 1,000 in texas (seems like a good estimate). The state would get $58,180 dollars for all of us. The cost of implementation would end up costing the state more money. Thats barely one person's salary plus adding the equipment (computers), mailouts, and processings. It may be a money looser at this point there are so few.
The biggest concern is extended range or plug-in hybrids. They still use gas, sometimes, if they use the range....How is this computed? Its even more unfair to slap the same cost to them since they are paying some fuel tax. How is this normalized? Even VMT is not that fair, one could drive totally on a volt battery 70 miles a day without gas assuming they got a charge at home and at the destination, yet a volt without a destination charger uses almost a gallon of gas. So non-BEV plug ins create a greater problem to solve.
Regardless a single fee for all plug-ins is quite unbalanced. But at the current amount of vehicles on the road, I don't think these states should be worrying about this yet. FYI 50k for roadway improvements is, maybe one asphalt overlay on one road. States like texas, on a VERY CONSTRAINED BUDGET get about 6-8 billion per year. A very small drop in the bucket for alot of additional effort. As for the comment about weight effects on a road, coming from transportation work, the difference between a smart car versus a large pickup truck is very very very very very small, so small it isn't even calculatable. But compared to a medium trucks (u-haul size) and large trucks (semis) the difference is quite large. My boss's 2 seater porshe weighs almost as much as my leaf - weight is really a mute point when discussing the car/truck/motorcycle section.
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