The UK has very substantial petrol taxes, which approximate a mileage tax. I don’t know how exactly the funding is managed in the UK, whether the money goes into general revenue or is allocated straight to road maintenance, but the ICE vehicle drivers are ultimately paying for roads one way or another.
And I’d say that that’s reasonable — I’ve no opposition to road vehicles at all, but road construction and maintenance is an externality, and you’d want to have that priced in, if you want the market to do efficient allocation of resources.
BEVs also make use of the road (and in fact, I suspect that due to the generally-greater-weight, they probably create more wear-and-tear, if anything).
EDIT: Though…with petrol tax, the tax tends to increase on heavier vehicles, since they tend to burn more fuel. It probably doesn’t perfectly mirror the increased road wear seen between a heavy and light ICE vehicle, but it’ll probably be closer than a simple “flat rate per mile” tax. As the article describes the BEV tax, it’ll be a flat rate per mile. It does seem to me that there’s a reasonable argument, if heavier BEVs create more road wear and tear than lighter BEVs, that the weight should be an input to a tax there as well.
The UK has very substantial petrol taxes, which approximate a mileage tax. I don’t know how exactly the funding is managed in the UK, whether the money goes into general revenue or is allocated straight to road maintenance, but the ICE vehicle drivers are ultimately paying for roads one way or another.
And I’d say that that’s reasonable — I’ve no opposition to road vehicles at all, but road construction and maintenance is an externality, and you’d want to have that priced in, if you want the market to do efficient allocation of resources.
BEVs also make use of the road (and in fact, I suspect that due to the generally-greater-weight, they probably create more wear-and-tear, if anything).
EDIT: Though…with petrol tax, the tax tends to increase on heavier vehicles, since they tend to burn more fuel. It probably doesn’t perfectly mirror the increased road wear seen between a heavy and light ICE vehicle, but it’ll probably be closer than a simple “flat rate per mile” tax. As the article describes the BEV tax, it’ll be a flat rate per mile. It does seem to me that there’s a reasonable argument, if heavier BEVs create more road wear and tear than lighter BEVs, that the weight should be an input to a tax there as well.