There is no free lunch, if Methanol became popular prices would rise very quickly, probably taking the source material up with it.
Used as fuel, all fuel taxes would be applied.
Anyone who wants to run is free to do so, I just do not want to lose the legal/practical ability to use MY cars due to an incompatible fuel being shoved down my throat.
I can assure you Methanol is VERY incompatible with every car I currently own, or ever intend to own.
Anyone who wants to run IT is free to do so.....
The assumption is that the availability of the feedstock - natural gas - is rapidly increasing. Methanol is simply a mode for the storage of natural gas in a liquid form.Used as fuel, all fuel taxes would be applied.
One way to put a finger on the scale would be to tax methanol at the same rate per gallon as gasoline. That would be unfair to methanol because you only get about half the heat energy from a gallon of methanol, and about 2/3 as much mileage. The road tax is supposed to fund the maintenance of roads, which maps to mileage rather than either volume of fuel or heat value.