If practical electric cars become available...

[MicaelS]

Ones that are a true replacement for fossil fuel cars, one you can plug in at your home, assuming you have a home garage. Then what happens to all the tax money from gasoline sales? How are streets and highways going to be funded? Every highway becomes a toll road? License plates start to cost $1,000 a year?

[dmallind]

1. Possibly yep

Or just tax electricity and devote part to roads.

BTW when I lived in Nebraska my plates WERE $1000/year. One of the few areas where NY has lower taxes than most.

[customerserviceguy]

2. You've got a point

Right now, the only way to tax drivers on use is to tax the fuel they burn. When that "fuel" is electricity, then there's no way to tell what the use is.

Now, maybe this sounds like I'm putting on my tinfoil hat, but I think they're working on an answer to that. You know all that "smart grid" stuff that you've been hearing about? The technology already exists to communicate through wires that supply power, and I can imagine that manufacturers will be required to put chips in devices to tell how much they're being used. Your electric car's odometer will be beamed up to the government every time you plug it in, and you'll be charged accordingly, right in your electric bill.

It will be fun when they can tell how much you use your coffee maker, or your beer fridge, or anything else that eventually becomes considered "undesirable"...

[endless october]

3. and how will we charge them

without expanding infrastructure?

we can barely run air conditioners without brown outs in a big part of the country.

we need to be building nukes and renewables now. this should be a high priority. plus, we need the jobs.

[ParkieDem]

5. I agree.

This is one issue that many electric-car supporters fail to realize: much of our electricity is generated by sources that are as dirty, if not dirtier, than gasoline.

If there were an explosion of electric cars on the market, the only electricity-generation source that is both plentiful and cheap enough to power those cars quickly is coal. Natural gas might be feasible, but it's still not super-clean and would take years to develop enough capacity. Nuclear is a good option, but still pretty controversial.

All that, plus the whole road-funding issue.

[endless october]

6. road funding could be covered several ways.

a small percentage electric tax, or perhaps even a permanently capped 1 percent national sales tax.

however, ending all war and interventionism would pay for building infrastructure coast to coast; both roads and electrical.

i also wouldn't mind seeing the new power plants built and operated nationally.

electric cars would be a great bridge to whatever we end up running them on in the future.

[-wulf-]

8. You're right

and almost no one talks about this problem. Not only is that power produced primarilly by coal (national averages) but there currently isn't enough power produced to support the added loads of plug-in electric cars.

The fist thing that would happen is that as with any other supply & demand situation, the increased demand combined with the limitted supply will cause power rates to go way up.

At current rough average electrical costs, the average person would probably spend in the neighborhood of 26 to 30 dollars a week in added power costs to charge their vehicle, figuring six hours of drive time per week. A modest four cent per kw/h increase in power would increase that weekly cost to 36 dollars, which is comparable to what that person would also pay for gasoline, so the cost to drive that vehicle would not increase that much.

However, that increased price for power would affect nearly everything.

Power prices would remain high until new plants are built to handle the added loads, and of course consumers will have to pay for those new plants as well, either through tariffs or through taxes, if the plants are government owned.

The energy problem isn't just a matter of switching from one energy source to another, but rather being able to produce enough power to meet demands.

[Statistical]

10. All three points are incorrect.

There is more than enough off-peak capacity to power millions of EV without building a single new power plant.
The consumption at off-peak (midnight to 6am) is less than 30% of capacity. To handle electrical load from electrical cars simply offer a rate half current rate on charging between midnight & 6am.

Electrical cost is negligible compared to gasoline even if electricity rises. Average EV gets about 3 to 4 miles per kwh.
At $0.10 per kwh that works out to $0.03 per mile. At current electric rates ($0.10 per kwh nationwide) the cost to charge an EV for is about $33 per month (12,000 miles annually). With lower priced off-peak charging that could be cut in half.

Lets compare that to gasoline:
At $3.00 per gallon and 30mpg = $0.10 per mile ($1,200 per year for 12,000 miles).
Higher gas prices simply widen that gap. They aren't even in the same ballpark. So any modest rise in electrical rates would be compensated by the 90% reduction in transportation fuel/energy costs.

Lastly EV being dirtier than Internal combustion is just 100% wrong. Internal combustion is so horribly inefficient that even 100% coal power emits less CO2 per mile than the most efficient gasoline powered vehicles.

[-wulf-]

13. Off Peak Capacity

Is not available everywhere.

To clarify, I was using rough numbers and under the scenario that all or most gas vehicles would be replaced with eletric. Obviously, this would not happen over night anyway.

In most cases, residential users pay a fixed rate for power so there isn't a lower costs associated with using power at night rather than in the day. In my area, only large consumers can qualify for real time pricing structures, though it may be different where you are.

Also, I know for a fact that a reduced availability of domestic coal last year placed the local utility in a serious problem, because if even one plant failed to operate at full capacity, they would have not been able to meet the demand and we would have had to go through rolling blackouts, similar to those experienced in California. I also know that with the advent of air conditioning and other advances, the concept of off-peak demand has slowly become less and less of a reality.

I'm not saying that the system would collapse, but there would be clear and unavoidable impacts to power costs if there were a mass migration to electric vehicles.

[Statistical]

17. I doubt it.

I am not doubting you had rolling blackouts but rather they don't indicate what you think they do. Rolling blackouts is an indication that peak demand is outstripping supply. Unless the rolling blackout lasted 24/7 the grid still has excess off peak capacity even though peak demand was exceeding max capacity of the grid.

Due to that nature of our demand habits there is literally thousands of terrawatts hours of generation that can be tapped off peak. You are right consumers don't have access to off-peak pricing. This is something (as number of EV increase) that will need to change and regulation can make that happen. EV owners could purchase a smart meter. Meter would track EV consumption during midnight & 6am and bill it at separate lower rate. This is a win-win for consumer and power generators. Peak power if very expensive and moving that demand to off peak hours helps economics of the utilities, in return consumer gets lower price on EV charge. Consumer bill would have two line items: normal usage & off peak EV usage.

Consumer would still be able to charge outside off peak hours however they would be billed the higher rate. Tesla is already working with CA utilities to implement something like that in CA. There is no reason why it couldn't be implemented nationwide.

Of course there are impacts but they are easily manageable and this is made easier. The largest bottleneck to EV however is the cost of batteries.

[-wulf-]

18. The higher rate

Yes, a smart meter would prevent the higher peak rates from impacting the overall consumption cost of the residence or business.

That being said, just as advances need to be made in EV technology, the smart meters aren't ready for prime time yet, in my opinion. Most of these that I've seen are IP addressable devices that can and have been hacked where installed. A simpler and more cost-effective solution would be for traditional meters to be installed at each residence that would simply be a separate account and billed under existing RTP pay structures. Each homeowner would receive two bills; one would be their traditional bill for their home meter, and the other would be for the EV usage which would be a separate meter and sub-account. If they do that, then most providers have a separate "Transportation" rate which is much lower than residential rates. These are usually for train systems.

And yes, this discussion has revolved around the impact of added load to the grids. The battery problem is potentially a sleeping giant of sorts. Not only are they expensive, but I'm not aware of any plan to deal with massive waste generated by dead batteries that is going to be acceptable on a large scale.

I think the cart is ahead of the horse in some ways, since it seems like the electric cars are going to be practical before the other problems they will generate will be solved, but these other issues will have solutions much quicker if the demand is there.

[Statistical]

19. Dual meters certainly is a low tech solution that works for me.

There doesn't need to be much waste from dead lithium batteries.
Mandate recycling with a fine at 500% of recycling cost.

The lithium in dead batteries is very valuable and will be more so as scarcity drives up cost of lithium.

Most of the problems with EV can be solved relatively easily with some smart legislation, regulation and even low cost/low tech solutions like a second meter (or someday a better smart meter).

The "good news" is I expect the ramp up for EV to be fairly slow allowing solutions to be developed before EV are mainstream. Battery tech really has to get a magnitude cheaper.

In a conventional car you are replacing a 200 pound gas tank that costs $50 with thousand pounds of batteries that cost $10,000. There are some savings in lack of drive train, etc but that is a huge differential to overcome. ithium batteries need to get about 3x cheaper and have 2x current density for EV to be able to compete head to head with ICE vehicles.

[Statistical]

9. Not true. Even coal powe is cleaner than the cleanest gasoline powered car.

Is all electrical vehicles ran on 100% coal (not saying that should be a goal) it still emits less CO2 than gasoline.

The main killer for efficiency is the internal combustion engine. Average vehicle is about 12% efficient and the theoretical limit is about 20%.

I mean think about that for a second. You burn 1 gallon of gasoline and 12% of the power goes to wheels while 88% is wasted as heat.

Even the oldest coal plant is 40%+ efficient and newer dual cycle natural gas turbines are 60%+ efficient.
Internal combustion engine can never overcome that deficiency.

This isn't a pro-coal argument. We should move away from fossil fuels. The point is that anything is better than staying with ultra inefficient internal combustion vehicles.

[madokie]

14. our worst generating plants are way cleaner than the cleanest ICE

whether it be natural gas, gasoline, diesel or bio-diesel. Do a little research and educate yourself that rather than spout talking points.:hi:

[Warpy]

4. User fees, most likely

When you get your car inspected once a year, they'll look at the odometer. Then you'll get a bill.

[Statistical]

7. Why not just collect it via license plates. All cars need license plates.

Say average vehicle currently drives 12,000 miles per year and gets 30mpg = 400 gallons of gas.

Currently total tax on gasoline nationawide is about 0.62 per gallon (state, federal, local).

So $248 per vehicle.

So you have a couple options:
1) raise price of plates by $248 per year.
or
2) for states that do an inspection check odometer and charge $20 per 1000 miles driven since last inspection.

Either way it is the same amount of revenue. Collect it per year in license plates, collect it per mile (paid once per year at annual inspection) or collect it per gallon.

As long as it is revenue neutral it is the same amount of money.

For the federal portion states could collect total amount (state, local, federal) and then pass on federal portion of the tax.

[Xithras]

11. This is precisely why sin taxes are ALWAYS a bad idea.

It's no different than the cigarrette tax issue. Starting in the 1980's, states across the nation started slapping special taxes on smokers to fund everything from medical care to education. Now that the number of smokers is dropping, and the U.S. smoking rate is now at its lowest point in history (under 20%, possibly for the first time since the 1700's), states are complaining about losing tax revenue. To make up for it, they increase the tax rates further, which simply increases the speed of the decline.

Sin taxes are a HORRIBLE way to fund essential services.

[flvegan]

12. From savings allocated by not having to fight endless wars.

If we had far less of a need for oil, we'd have far less interest in killing people that live where we need to get it from.

[TheMightyFavog]

15. Mileage-based tax.

That's how its done with big rigs and with people who modify their cars to run on vegetable oil or other biofuels.

[cherokeeprogressive]

16. One thing you can be sure of. The DMV, or whatever it's called in some states

WILL GET ITS MONEY. Fees and tolls will rise in proportion with the reduction in gas taxes levied.