It has begun.
A push to force EVERYONE to buy electric cars.
One way or another, libtards want to artificially create demand for those type of cars.
Actually, many democrats have sought ways to recoup the tax revenue "lost" to electric cars, and this "by the mile" proposal is one way to achieve this.
While I find taxes in general to be distasteful (and think that the government's ability to tax should be severely curtailed and tightly circumscribed) a move for 'by the mile' taxation is something that I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to. My reasoning is the following - and it assumes that providing certain transportation infrastructure, such as highways, is a proper function of government (note: I'm not 100% sold on this premise), but let's assume it arguendo.
With that assumption entered, it follows that the government needs to maintain that transportation infrastructure. Currently, much of that maintenance (which is, granted, subpar) is financed from these gasoline taxes at the Federal level and vehicle registration taxes at the State level.
So now the question becomes, are gasoline taxes the best and most efficient way to finance such maintenance? I submit that driving back and forth in the city is not the same as driving back and forth between Las Vegas and Los Angeles twice a week. Vehicles achieve their best fuel economy on the highway and travel at highway speeds causes more damage to roadways that are more expensive to build than roadways inside the city. So in a perverse way, people driving inside the city are forced to pay more to maintain highways which they may not use.
In that sense, I wouldn't mind moving to a system where you'd get taxed based on the miles you drove and the type of road you drove on. This would also mean that electric car owners who drove on highways would end up paying for the maintenance of the infrastructure that they use, something which they currently don't do.
However, there are serious implications involved with moving to such a scheme. The 800 lbs gorilla is privacy: in the wake of recent revelations do we really want to give the government the explicit authority/ability to track our location, ostensibly for taxation purposes? I'm not naive, and I know they are getting a lot of that information anyways, but I don't know that I'd want to codify the authority for them to collect it.
As for electric cars in general, I have to tell you that I have driven the Tesla Model S and I find it to be a superb automobile. If that car represents the future of electric vehicles then I say, bring the electric cars on!
