Can it be true that California, in pursuit of reduced emissions from internal combustion engine vehicles, has mandated that heavier EV cars and trucks tear up the states’ roads? Shockingly, the state has no accompanying mandate on those heavier vehicles to contribute funds to the maintenance and repairs of the roads they will be utilizing!
An EV battery for a sedan weighs 1,000 pounds, while heavy-duty electric truck batteries can weigh up to 16,000 pounds, which is 16 times more than the Tesla battery.
California has almost 400,000 miles of roadways used by the State’s 30 million vehicles. Those roadways are heavily dependent on road taxes from fuels that contribute more than $8.8 billion annually, the same gas tax revenues that also funds many environmental programs and the high speed rail project. That $8.8 billion revenue source will diminish in the decades ahead as EV’s begin to replace internal combustion engine vehicles.
A 2022 Report Card Ranking of state-by-state road health by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Infrastructure Report Card puts California in second-to-last place, tied with........