The same compelling interest the relevant billing entities have in knowing how much electricity or water you use. Like electricity and water, road maintenance costs money, and unless your car flies to its destination, it imposes wear-and-tear on roads, which directly affects maintenance costs. Maybe you'd be more comfortable having roads maintained by some private entity (and that would be fine by me), but the bottom line is that somebody needs to pay for road maintenance, and odometer readings, which are taken during annual vehicle inspections (in states that have them) are a reasonable way of finding out how much wear and tear (and therefore cost) a given car has imposed on the roads.
It would seem to me a tire tax would be the best way of handling the issue.
Don’t know how old you are, but here goes.
Gasoline taxes, Federal, state and maybe local were emplaced specifically for road maintenance and repair. The drives thus paid for the “use” and upkeep of roadways built usually by public bonds. And for decades this worked fairly well albeit with the usual graft involved in such civic projects. Those taxes were not part of the general fund.
So the gasoline/diesl already taxes the user based on the drivers usage and fuel consumption. Low mpg vehicles pay the premium for the necessity or need of the high consumption.
The pols are playing three card Monte with the usual semi-literate and disengaged populous. You actually can fool most of the people most of the time, even here on FR.
Have a good evening.