Dick Lemieux lives in Concord.

In their effort to create parity between drivers of gas-powered cars and drivers of hybrid and electric cars, legislators are again proposing a flat annual surcharge registration fee — $100 for EVs and $50 for hybrids. (”Proposal would make EV drivers pay fee for roads,” Monitor, 5/24)

I wonder if they realize that those fees would create new disparities, disproportionally affecting EV and hybrid drivers based on how many miles they drive. Some EV drivers would be paying higher road use taxes than drivers of gas guzzlers.

The driver of an EV who drives 10,000 miles a year, would pay a penny a mile but the driver of an EV who drives 5,000 miles a year would pay two cents a mile: twice as much. The driver of an EV who drives only 1,000 miles a year, would pay ten cents a mile.

For comparison, a gas-powered car or van that gets 23.8 mpg pays a penny a mile in state gas taxes (currently $0.238/gallon) and a gas guzzler that gets 11.9 mpg pays two cents a mile, regardless of how many miles they are driven.

So, the driver of an EV that is driven 1,000 miles a year will be paying five times as much per mile as the driver of a gas guzzler and ten times as much per mile as the driver of an ordinary gas car.

The principle of highway user fees (a.k.a. taxes), which goes back further than the Eisenhower Administration, is that highway users should pay for their use of highways in proportion to their use of highways. The more you drive, the more you pay. The gas tax used to be a reasonable proxy for that, but it is no longer.

The annual surcharge would turn that principle on its head. The less you drive, the more you pay. The surcharge is a terrible proxy for the user-pays principle. Rather than correct disparities, it would create new ones and rearrange winners and losers.

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