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@spmatich I don't care, let's have a road-user tax.

As long as every single vehicle pays it.

Not just EVs. All transport. Trucks, buses, everything that drives on a public road.

And let's make it based on how much it actually costs to handle the damage that vehicle does to the road. Divide weight by number of axles and multiply by distance driven in a year. That should give a rough measure of the road wear caused by that vehicle.

What's that sound? That's the sound of the entire road freight industry suddenly protesting that this would be massively unfair to them.

What's that other sound? That's the sound of every driver suddenly wondering out oud how the Department of Taxing Cars is going to expect people to report their distance travelled each year. We've seen how this played out in Victoria - it was problematic at best.

Side note: the FTCS pretends that by not driving on roads, mining vehicles don't have to pay for the upkeep on roads. We don't have to argue that if we just take the fuel tax away and replace it with a road usage charge.

Other note: we know thanks to physics that the amount of damage to roads is proportional to vehicle mass squared. I don't think we need to get that technical just yet.

The Australian Electric Vehicle Association has argued for an across-the-board road usage charge for years. But we know that the road freight industry is dead against it applying to them.