I received my Ohio license plate renewals for our Odyssey and Prius today. The Honda Odyssey renewal is $67.28 and they added a $100 hybrid/EV tax to the Prius so it is $167.28 for this year. There is just something wrong with buying a hybrid as our daily driver and then get taxed for operating an efficient vehicle. I live in neighborhood where nearly every home has a pickup truck or SUV in the drive. There is a certain irony that I am the one to get penalized by our forward thinking Ohio politicians. They also just raised our Ohio tax on gasoline 10 cents to 38.5 cents per gallon which if it is actually used to repair bridges and roads I am all for that. I presented a class in Brussels Belgium about 10 years ago and a member of our company picked me up at the airport. He was driving a VW station wagon. I commented that it smelled new and he said that he just bought it. He said that taxes on the next larger engine would have been an additional $7000. Gas is about $1.50 / liter or $5.50 a gallon there today. I think that Belgium has now switched over to an annual road tax based on engine displacement rather than a big tax at time of purchase. It just seems that Europe's logic to tax less fuel efficient vehicles makes more sense than our rules.
Well, they do need money to maintain the road system. With increasing fleet MPGs, the old gas tax revenue stream is simply not keeping up. Not that it would even with the old gas-hog vehicles. If these fuel taxes were going to climate change remediation, then your complaint would have more standing. But no, this money is for roads. If that stings, then check out my state. Starting this year, regular hybrids are being assessed a $75/year tax to help support an EV charging network. Which our hybrids cannot use, because they can't plug in! Real EVs pay that too, plus an additional tax to replace the fuel tax they don't pay. Even that is still too low, it should be higher. Ours is 49.4 cents per gallon, and even that is insufficient for the roads budget, necessitating additional funding.
we currently livein a world where efficiency and care of the environment is not appreciated by our neighbors, or the powers that be. enjoy the day, who knows what tomorrow may bring
