Countries Eye Weight Tax To Counter Public Safety Threat Of Extremely Heavy, Large EVs

The United States is already a global leader in traffic-related fatalities, with a thirty-percent jump in the last decade. That’s in contrast to every other developed country, which saw a decline.

So of course it’s a perfect time to flood American highways with a parade of extremely heavy EVs with unprecedented acceleration. Some of which are extremely pointy and feature half-cooked automation technology with a growing body count.

The electric Ford Lightning, for example, is a whopping 6,500 pounds. The Hummer EV is even heavier, clocking in at 9,000 pounds. Its battery alone weighs more than a Honda Civic. Experts have pointed out the significant safety ramifications of this transition for a while, but it’s still not clear that we’ve prepared the regulatory and policy landscape for such a transition.

Even if you don’t want a giant, extremely heavy EV, the tendency to purchase such vehicles creates an arm race for everyone interested in protecting their family on the road. That in turn causes a shift away from smaller EVs in a bid to feed the elemental materials needed for ever larger EV batteries.

That very quickly starts to deflate many of the benefits of EVs as a safer, more environmentally friendly alternatives. Hoping to counter that shift, some countries have increasingly been pushing for a weight tax on EV vehicles:

“Norway, a pioneer in EV use, is considering a weight-based tax to steer buyers away from the fattest EVs (the Norwegian government recently eliminated EV purchase incentives). France already has one on SUVs. Buyers of new diesel and gasoline vehicles must pay a tax of €10 ($14.58) a kilo (2.2 pounds) above 1.8 tons. The weight threshold is to be reduced. EVs are exempt, but as those vehicles become heavier and more popular, it seems they will get swept into the weight-based tax net.”

A smattering of localities have tried to prepare for the threat. DC, for example, has imposed a creative vehicle registration fee schedule that has heavy EV truck and SUV owners paying higher registration fees than lighter EV sedans. But it’s an outlier.

Federally we’re doing… nothing to try and counterbalance the potential safety threat. There are occasionally calls to impose a weight tax on EVs, but they’ve gone nowhere out of fears they’ll stifle industry growth, innovation, or our love for accountability-optional freedom. Instead we’ve just generally offered a catch all $7,500 federal tax credit for all EV purchases, provided they’re less than 14,000 pounds.

Much like Tesla’s half-baked and severely misrepresented self-driving technologies, it seems pretty clear we’re going to let the corpses pile up first, then maybe figure out policy solutions down the road a decade after the fact. Surely that will work out great for everybody involved. Especially cyclists and pedestrians already traversing overtly hostile transit design on the daily.