There is nothing you can do about it, electric vehicle taxes are coming

[MotoNews]

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As the government in Switzerland looks into a distance-based electric vehicle tax, what version might we see in the UK soon?

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[DeadEye]

Is it going to be a flat tax, or based on miles driven to get a proportion of those missing  Fuel tax dollars !

They bought those cars to save the environment not Save Money - obviously…. So what’s a few dollars more !

[Hosstage]

It was inevitable. How are roads to be paid for otherwise?

[dirtrider]

Afternoon,

 

I can see some good coming from this & some not so good (at least is USA). 

 

The good is the ability to tax legal electric vehicles for their portion of the road wear, and road upkeep.

 

It would also allow taxing on vehicle road travel even if/when they steal the electricity (my fear is this will become quite prevalent in some areas of the US).  Imagine if they now pumped gasoline into all houses, there would be a lot of gasoline theft.

 

The bad is in not not being able to properly tax mis-registered vehicles, stolen vehicles, unregistered vehicles, or other creative work-arounds. 

 

At least now with a "gasoline" road tax even stolen or non registered IC vehicles pay the road tax as they need the fuel to drive it.

 

Unless the state has a yearly inspection how is the government even going to know how many miles a vehicle traveled? They will probably ask on the state or federal tax returns but not everyone files tax returns, or tells the truth, or keeps accurate data on mile traveled.   Possibly a state or federal link to dealers & major repair facilities that automatically update vehicle mileage at time of service. (that will miss a lot of self service vehicles though)

 

Eventually most electric vehicles will probably have some sort of automatic mileage reporting as the vehicle is used or nears recording antennas so eventually it will probably work out to be good deal, there will still be cheaters, but probably not enough to make a difference. 

 

 

[Rougarou]

Also, likely the "systems" on electric vehicles, I'd guess even IC vehicles as well, are computerized and as a computerized system, can be hacked and if it can be hacked, the odometer can be rolled back and if the odometer can be rolled back, the "tax" can be lessened, if based on miles driven.

[John Ranalletta]

2 minutes ago, Rougarou said:

Also, likely the "systems" on electric vehicles, I'd guess even IC vehicles as well, are computerized and as a computerized system, can be hacked and if it can be hacked, the odometer can be rolled back and if the odometer can be rolled back, the "tax" can be lessened, if based on miles driven.

If what I read is true, that will be harder to do.  Reportedly, GM locked tuners out of the C8 ecu completely by encrypting it.  

[Hosstage]

All new vehicles are "wired" to the world, mileage will be updated and taxed on a real time basis.

Of course, they are not going to track your movements, just the mileage used while moving freely about. They will never issue a citation for a driving infraction or charge you with a crime for being in the vicinity of a crime based on monitoring.....

[dirtrider]

5 minutes ago, John Ranalletta said:

If what I read is true, that will be harder to do.  Reportedly, GM locked tuners out of the C8 ecu completely by encrypting it.  

Afternoon John

 

Yes, more difficult to do but not totally impossible with the correct equipment. The mileage is stored in more than than just one place (like ECU and onboard body/dash modules so that helps). 

 

 

 

 

[Skywagon]

I'm sure you all have the same kind of systems.  My car mileage is and has been available on cars I've bought since 2007.  I get mileage reminders from the dealer for service and I have an app on my phone that I can see the mileage at any time.  I suspect all the EV's have the same so polling them annually wouldn't be hard.  There might be some tech folks that might work around it but I doubt the average EV buyer would be capable or have interest in spending their time fiddling with it.  I suspect an aftermarket tool will find it's way into some of them.

 

On one of my cars it has a screen in the back for people to watch movies from a dvd or a streaming service.  Well it has the same screen up front for the driver, but you can't watch video from it while moving....unless you buy an aftermarket tool like I did.  It was a pain to install, but it worked.  Now the wife can sit in the upfront passenger seat and see the same video folks in the back see.  I don't use it by myself as not interested, but the wife does.  I listen to old radio programs from OTR Streamer when I am by myself.

[Rougarou]

41 minutes ago, John Ranalletta said:

If what I read is true, that will be harder to do.  Reportedly, GM locked tuners out of the C8 ecu completely by encrypting it.  

 

Sorry, smart people exists.  If the Apple and Android phones can be hacked (ya, CIA I know), some 14 year old data-dink nerd can probably spend his nights with RedBull and a laptop to backdoor into a car computer, then sell the way in via 4Chan or Facebook Marketplace,.....Silkroad is no longer, but the DarkWeb is still in full swing.

[DeadEye]

We purchased a Ford Bronco earlier this year and it is constantly “Phoning home “ with usage data… it’s already too late…