Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

Governments that have fuel excise taxes will do anything to keep their income flowing, including sabotaging EVs and public transport. This is why I would always snicker when reading Tom Friedman's harping on a fuel excise tax: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/opinion/20friedman.html

Every new tax always leads to increased spending then to more tax ad nauseum.

In Australia most already fall under the Federal “Luxury Car Tax”[1]. Cars with a luxury car tax (LCT) value over the LCT threshold attract an LCT rate of 33%.

A Tesla model 3 starts at $AUD 66,900 in Australia.

https://www.ato.gov.au/rates/luxury-car-tax-rate-and-thresho...

I'm not really sure there's a good answer here.

Fuel tax is 43 cents a litre. Australian cars right now avg about 13.1 litres per 100km. So you're looking at ~$5.6 per 100km for fuel tax.

This tax is adding $2.5 tax per 100km for electric.

Right now, EVs are absolutely creating an regressive tax situation with regards to fuel. Those who can afford to buy newer, efficient cars can usually save money on tax over those who can't. For electric, it was worse - because they do tend to be more expensive to purchase up front, and they paid no fuel tax at all.

And frankly, infrastructure is expensive, and governments need to plan on continuing to maintain it.

That said - I think the only real answer here is a more thorough overhaul of how you tax road usage. Perhaps it's time to ditch the fuel excise tax entirely, and tax all drivers based on (vehicle weight * kms driven * some constant).

Encourage drivers to move to lighter vehicles which cause less wear and tear on the road, and drop the disparity between fuel and electric. They both use the same tires.

> The EV industry accepts that a road user charge is inevitable as the car fleets transition to electric, but argue it should be introduced fairly and evenly. It points out the petrol excise goes into general revenue rather than road funding, and EV owners pay more tax than petrol car owners due to higher taxes from GST, stamp duty, and luxury car tax.

I think it's ok for one particular tax to be regressive if the general taxation scheme is not.

Trucks do...wait for it...1,400x more damage to roads than standard passenger vehicles do.