The fuel excise obviously taxed larger vehicles more over the same distance. It totally makes sense to have weight classes.

Oh, and Australia needs a "kei" class, dammit. Nobody's second car has any business being bigger than that.

As the article points out, the fuel excise tax does not pay for roads, it goes into general revenue and does not collect enough to pay for the damage done by air pollution. The argument is that roads should be paid for by a tax on vehicle weight and distance travelled whether ICE or EV in addition to the fuel excise tax.

That's what it is presented as. It functions as a disincentive against EVs

Though vehicles overall should be paying enough to pay for their infrastructure, I'd like that to be entirely borne by fossil fuel vehicles to move the balance of vehicles towards the quieter and less polluting

Well, we'll just have to tax bicycles, buses and trains etc!

And anyone/anything who has legs. I'm awake to your 'walking' and 'riding a horse' schemes.

Fuel excise makes sense, the more fuel you use the more you've probably driven, the more damage you've contributed to the road. How to make it fair for EV users with out invading individual privacy is harder. Like what should a commuter pay compared to a courier who would do far more kms and relies on the road for the business?

It's going to be unpopular, but as a car lover, I'm happy to pay a carbon tax to keep driving gas guzzlers and have that reinvested into carbon neutrality, whether that's EV subsidies or something else work a better carbon return

Thanks for sharing!

I thought this line from the conclusion was particularly interesting:

Vehicle registration fees make only a modest contribution to road costs. That’s why all motorists should pay a road-user charge.

I'm torn. I do like the idea, in principle. Add a road-use charge to both EVs and ICE vehicles. That helps keep EVs at an economic leg-up over ICE, while also helping address the broader societal costs of cars.

The thing that makes me nervous is that even today, when there's no such thing as a road use charge and roads are paid for out of general revenue, we frequently see drivers say things like "I have a right to be on the road because I'm paying to use it, and you need to get out of my way" to cyclists. This is both factually and morally wrong, and my concern is that if the factual side of it were made correct, it might be a little harder to immediately shut them down for the bad morals. Not that I think some people arguing in bad faith should be a reason to avoid doing a good thing. It just needs to be accompanied by strong PR around the idea that it's to help offset the damage cars do to roads, and perhaps also the effects of pollution caused by tyres. And not merely framed purely as a toll for the right to use the roads.

The main issue with vignettes that I see, is that they don't charge more for driving more.

Yes, it stings when you have to pay for a vignette the one time you drive through a country on a roadtrip, but to anyone that lives in that country it is just a yearly expense that you pay once. Then afterwards you can drive as much as you want without it costing you a dime more.

I much prefer the mileage tax system where you either charge per vehicle mile driven (the NL is looking to introduce that as a replacement of the fuel tax), or per kilometer of toll road used (like the Peage in France).
In that system it stings once, but it stings every susbequent trip as well. It is a bigger disincentive than the flat fee of the vignette.