Electric car owners in Vermont recently received a letter from the Department of Motor Vehicles with some bad news. From January 1 they would have to pay $178 a year to register their cars, twice as much as owners of vehicles with internal combustion engines.
By imposing the higher fee, Vermont became the last state to make people pay a premium to drive electric. At least 39 states charge such annual fees, including $50 in Hawaii and $200 in Texas, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That’s more than any state a few years ago.
Now, as President Trump rolls back the Biden administration’s measures to promote electric vehicles, Republicans in Congress are considering a national levy to shore up the ailing road and bridge fund .
The fees are an attempt to offset the reduced gasoline tax revenue that electric cars don’t pay, for obvious reasons. They are an example of how governments are struggling to adapt to the technological upheaval in the automotive industry.
Environmentalists and consumer groups agree that electric vehicle owners should help pay for road maintenance and construction. But they worry that Republicans, who control Congress, will set the cap extremely high to punish EV owners, who tend to be liberal.
That’s already happened in Texas and other states, said Chris Harto, a senior policy analyst at Consumer Reports who focuses on transportation and energy.
“Electric vehicle owners should contribute to paying for the roads they use,” he said. However, he added, “in some cases, states apply fees that are quite punitive to EV drivers, far more than the owner of a gas vehicle would pay.”
Flat charges are also unfair to low-income drivers or people who don’t drive much, making it even harder for them to buy cars that pollute less, said Mr. Paper and others. Federal and state gasoline and diesel taxes are levied on a per-gallon basis, so people who drive more — or gas up — automatically pay more.
The main reason fuel tax revenue has fallen is that internal combustion engines have become much more efficient, while political leaders have been reluctant to raise fuel taxes to keep up with inflation.
The federal gasoline tax of 18.4 cents a gallon has not been raised since 1993. The Highway Trust Fund, which finances transportation projects with the proceeds of that tax, could become insolvent by 2027 without new sources of funding, say analysts. A list of tax and policy spending policies being considered by Republicans in Congress includes taxing electric vehicles to help replenish the Highway Fund.
There are 5.4 million electric vehicles on US roads, according to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an industry group. But that’s about 2 percent of the total and not the main cause of revenue.
“Lawmakers are finding a convenient scapegoat and punishing the cleanest vehicles on the road while ignoring the real cause of the shortage,” said Max Baumhefner, director of electric vehicle infrastructure at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Some of the highest EV fees are in states that typically vote Republican, such as Texas, Wyoming and Ohio, which charge $200 a year on top of the regular registration fee.
Robert Nichols, a Texas Republican senator who sponsored legislation in 2023 to enact a fee, said the amount was determined by analyzing what the average owner of a gas-powered vehicle pays.
“It’s not something against EVs. We have Tesla here in Texas and we’re very proud,” he said, referring to the electric car maker, which has its headquarters and a factory in Austin. “But everyone has to pay for the road.”
Texas is one of the states singled out by Consumer Reports for overcharging electric vehicle drivers. The organization cites Texas’ relatively low gas tax of 20 cents a gallon, well below the national average of about 50 cents.
Mr. Nichols acknowledged that lawmakers have been reluctant to raise taxes on gas car drivers. “Nobody wants that on their tombstone: ‘Raise the gas tax,'” he said.
But ever-increasing EV fees aren’t just a red-state phenomenon. Washington, which charges $150, is as progressive as any blue state. And in Vermont, lawmakers passed a fee law last year because they were concerned that the growing number of electric vehicles posed a risk to the state’s finances, said Patrick Murphy, director of state policy at the Vermont Agency of Transportation.
“Legislators recognized that we are approaching the tipping point where EV adoption has become mainstream in Vermont,” he said.
Electric vehicles accounted for 12 percent of new car sales in Vermont last year, above the national average of 8 percent. Mr. Murphy noted that fees collected from electric vehicle owners are earmarked for infrastructure such as chargers. At $89 a year on top of the standard enrollment fee, Vermont’s fee is also on the lower end of what states charge.
People on both sides of the debate agree that a fairer system would charge EV owners per mile driven. But doing so is complicated. Some states are experimenting with technology that tracks mileage and charges owners accordingly. But the systems are expensive and raise privacy issues.
A fixed fee “isn’t perfect,” acknowledged Mr. Nichols, the Texas legislator. “But it’s a big step forward. It’s fair without creating a huge bureaucracy.”
Some states, such as Iowa, Georgia and Kentucky, tax electric vehicle chargers. But this system misses a lot of cars. Most people charge at home, using public chargers only occasionally.
States that do not charge higher fees for electric cars include Alaska, Arizona, New York and Massachusetts, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In 2026, Vermont plans to be among the first states to try charging EV owners based on how much they drive.
That will be relatively easy in Vermont, said Mr. Murphy, because officials already collect odometer readings when owners bring their cars in for annual safety checks. This is not the case in many states.
Even a mileage tracking system has flaws. It taxes owners for trips to other states and collects no revenue from out-of-state visitors.
“The whole approach we’ve had is to keep things as simple as possible in the beginning, to create something where all vehicles pay something for our infrastructure,” said Mr. Murphy, “and then evolve over time to continually make it a fairer system.”
