Electric cars, Texas wants to introduce a road tax of 200 dollars a year – Corriere.it

Texas wants to introduce a new highway tax that should hit electric car owners, to compensate for the lost excise taxes on fuels, which are used to ensure road maintenance. The bill presented by Republican Senator Robert Nichols, who is also chairman of the state’s transportation commission, provides for a tax of up to $200 a year. The proposal is yet another confirmation of how much the spread of electric cars is causing concern among governments for the impact that the abandonment of heat engines and fossil fuels is having on tax revenues. The Texan bill has already been approved by the House of Representatives and will have to be definitively adopted by Republican Governor Gregory Wayne.

A system to compensate for lower income

Texas, thanks to excise taxes on fuel, collects almost 30% of the resources that are destined for investments in roads and highways. Given the progressive decline in this revenue and the push given by the Biden plan to sustainable mobility, the state has decided to find an alternative to prevent public finances from becoming impoverished. And that’s not all: at least twenty American states have decided to tax battery-powered vehicles to compensate for lower tax revenues. However, the tax the Texan government is working on is much higher than that currently applied in other states. California, for example, charges electric car owners about $108 a year.

Tesla and Musk’s plans

Ironically: the state that is working on one of the highest taxes for electric vehicle owners is precisely the one Elon Musk chose as the headquarters of his company, after Tesla moved from Palo Alto to Austin. In recent days, the American billionaire announced that he had reached a new milestone in his Texan gigafactory for the production of Model Y vehicles, which increased by almost 67% in less than five months. Also in Texas, the electric car giant has started work on the construction of a new lithium refinery, an essential raw material for electric vehicle batteries. Production activities are expected to begin in 2025. Once fully operational, more than 250 full-time employees will work within this facility.