Nah, because the cost of electricity is so much lower (half the cost per mile), you pay the charging investment upfront, buying lower go forward fuel costs for the US fleet (and more drivers switch to EVs when they won’t have range anxiety or concern charging infra won’t be where they need it). Think national mobility energy infra total cost of ownership. You’re also taking off the road, rail, and sea energy transport (something like 40% of commercial ocean shipping is moving energy around, and there are 100k tanker trucks delivering fuel to fuel stations in the US [1]).
It’s also energy dollars that now stay in the US versus whatever portion would’ve gone to OPEC or another foreign petroleum seller (although a fraction of those dollars might make their way to foreign investors in US generation).
The gains happen faster if your target gasoline superusers first [2] [3].
Are the local road taxes that EV chargers pay equivalent to gas? I don't own an EV, so I don't know. If EV doesn't include the same taxes then it seems like the majority of the cost benefits of owning an EV amount to simply avoiding taxes for roads, schools, etc.
Looking at the table above and your linked article the numbers don't add up. My gas guzzler has an 18 gallon tank. Looking at the taxes we see:
1. CA State Tax - $9.72
2. Fed. Excise - $3.31
6. Local Taxes - ($2.00/gal * .037) - $1.33
Which adds up to $14.36 in taxes every time I pay for a full tank. I use about a tank a week. So, I buy 52 tanks of gas a year. This works out to $746.72. I also pay car registration of ~$300 a year.
From the article you're only paying a one-time fee of $100. The registration fee is also capped $175 first year. My total tax burden (gas taxes + reg) is $1,046.72 and yours is only $275 for the first year, $175 after.
I intentionally left out the low carbon programs in my calculation to make a fair comparison. The taxes above that are paid are required to fund roads, schools, etc. None of which you're paying on your EV. You're saving $871.72 from not paying for these things.
Also, I asked chat GPT how much it costs to charge an electric vehicle at home. It gave me the formula: 60 kWh x $0.20/kWh = $12. So this would be $624/year. So assuming gas w/o taxes @ $2/gal my gas guzzler is costing me $1872 a year. $1248 more than your EV. This is some good cost savings.
So including the taxes above you are not paying and your cheaper charge rate, your total cost savings is around $2,119.72. This is a pretty decent cost savings.
So you're correct, EV vs. gas is definitely cheaper. But, the point that I'm making is that nearly 40% of your cost savings accrues from not paying taxes on necessary things like roads and schools. The cost effectiveness of EV's has more to do with tax policy than the underlying efficiency gains technology. Ideally they will become cheaper over time, but the significant cost of taxes to fund the government programs we need is going to remain.
The chargers would be artificially cheaper though. The land for the gas stations has already been acquired, they've been hooked up to utilities. Installing chargers at them will be a fraction of the cost of originally building them out.
