In all fairness part of the gas taxes are supposed to be for road maintenance, so if you drive a electric car and pay no fuel taxes you are by default not paying your share of road maintenance. Is anyone going to cry for these car owners? Not Me.
Do you remember when the states gave subsidies to people who drove big cars, because it wasn’t fair that they had low gas mileage and were therefore paying a lot more in gas tax?
nope, I don’t either. “fairness” is really just about the state being able to target a minority for a tax increase, so they can say the “average” person didn’t get a tax increase, defining “average” as “median”.
BTW, ignoring electric vehicles, which clearly pay NO gas tax, here is a list of some of the most fuel efficient cars, by class:
2-seater: Honda CR-Z
mini-compact: Scion iQ
subcompact: Chevrolet Spark
compact: Toyota Prius c Hybrid
midsize: Toyota Prius Hybrid
Large: Ford C-MAX Hybrid FWD
small wagon: Audi A3
small wagon: Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen
midsize wagon: Toyota Prius v
Only 4 of the 9 cars were hybrids. So taxing “hybrids” more because they pay less in gas tax isn’t “fair”, since in many cases regular cars are getting better gas mileage and paying less in gas tax.
Meanwhile, these taxes they add are fixed amounts yearly, which means the guy who owns a hybrid but rarely drives it will pay a lot more for the roads than they get out of the roads.