Texas Electric Vehicle Owners Would Have to Pay an Annual Fee to Drive, If Bill Passes

If you drive an electric car, I'm sure you're not enjoying those trips to the gas pump right now. However, the taxman is coming for you if this bill passes.

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We see more and more companies offering electric models for some of their more popular vehicles. Electric cars have definitely become more popular over the past decade, this also means less tax money for the state. Electric cars are not filling up at the pump, so no gas taxes. However, a bigger part of those taxes goes back into maintaining the roads here in Texas, which those electric cars are still traveling on.

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So should electric cars be chipping into maintaining the roads which they're driving on? “If we're moving into an electric future, then a gas tax is a really terrible way to pay for our roads and bridges and other infrastructure that vehicles need,” said Sebastian Blanco, contributing editor for Car and Driver magazine. “Instead of the way it works today, which is every time you gas up, some of your money goes to pay for those roads and bridges and things, the idea would be to just charge EV drivers an annual fee and so that … the state can collect money from them just the way it does from gas powered vehicle drivers today.”

So how much would you pay? Depending on what type of car you buy, somewhere between $200 and $250 a YEAR. Also, if you drive over 9,000 miles in that year as well, you could pay an additional $190. Plus another $10 charge that would go into charging infrastructure in the state. Oh boy, some folks are not going to like this one if it passes. Guess we will wait and see if electric car owners have to start chipping into the infrastructure.