Georgia Legislature Just Pulled the Plug on Electric Cars

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So you think you deserve a tax credit for helping save the environment? Feeling all smug because you don't pay gas tax? Well, the state of Georgia has a message for you..."screw you hippie!" :(

Georgia is pulling the plug on that $5,000 tax credit — a move budget analysts say will contribute $66 million to the state's coffers in 2016 and nearly $190 million by 2020. But it gets worse for electric vehicle boosters. Legislators are adding a $200-a-year annual fee for owners to offset the loss of gasoline taxes that drivers would otherwise pay to maintain roads.
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As electric cars become more common all of these subsidies and credits will vanish.
 
It's a good start, but I think it's probably a better idea to tax electrical power more heavily since it's a lot more critical with much of our information technology depending on it to operate. Doing that will eliminate the discriminatory annual fee for Tesla losers so they don't feel singled out and generate additional revenue while also forcing people to be more power efficient about leaving tons of stupid stuff like their TVs and air conditioners running all the time. Getting rid of or reducing the amount of AC will help prepare people to deal with it during the coming energy crisis and subsequent societal collapse anyway while also encouraging them to exercise more since thinner people are less sensitive to heat.
 
{NG}Fidel said:
The annual fee is Such bs. I get the rest though.
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I will toss this out there as a GA resident: "Motor use fuel tax (MUFT) revenue is the primary source of both federal and state funds used
to finance roads and bridges and represents one of the most complex taxes to administer and understand."

By driving an electric vehicle on state funded roads and bridges, you are exempting yourself for paying for their upkeep. Gasoline and diesel vehicles fund this through fuel sales. This is an attempt to recapture some of that and allow drivers to share the burden of infrastructure upkeep regardless of fuel type.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
It's a good start, but I think it's probably a better idea to tax electrical power more heavily since it's a lot more critical with much of our information technology depending on it to operate. Doing that will eliminate the discriminatory annual fee for Tesla losers so they don't feel singled out and generate additional revenue while also forcing people to be more power efficient about leaving tons of stupid stuff like their TVs and air conditioners running all the time. Getting rid of or reducing the amount of AC will help prepare people to deal with it during the coming energy crisis and subsequent societal collapse anyway while also encouraging them to exercise more since thinner people are less sensitive to heat.
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In this case, I think it's better to tax the electric car driver. If you ran a server farm in GA would you want to be paying tax on that electricity to fix the roads? Getting people to be more conscious of their electrical waste is a great thing to do otherwise though.
 
cnealjr said:
I will toss this out there as a GA resident: "Motor use fuel tax (MUFT) revenue is the primary source of both federal and state funds used
to finance roads and bridges and represents one of the most complex taxes to administer and understand."

By driving an electric vehicle on state funded roads and bridges, you are exempting yourself for paying for their upkeep. Gasoline and diesel vehicles fund this through fuel sales. This is an attempt to recapture some of that and allow drivers to share the burden of infrastructure upkeep regardless of fuel type.
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Oh cmon it has never been used in that way in probably decades lol
 
I can understand dropping the tax break, they did in California for hybrid vehicles after X amount got on the roads as they are meant to be something that pushes a direction that they want to go. Although I am fine with dropping the tax credit (#2 electric car state in country kind of showed it was effective), the statement of "free cars for Yuppies" is fucking moronic, it's a $5000 tax break, $5000 might get you to upgrade a package or two on a car and that's it. And in order to actually take advantage of that entire amount on state taxes you need to be making over $100k a year (based on Georgia's tax rates w/ std. deduction), except for the Tesla, these are not luxury cars. Politicians should have simply said "We have achieved our goal of getting these cars the proper push for alternative fuel vehicles and are ending the tax credit program" instead they just insulted every single electric car owner by calling them yuppies.

By driving an electric vehicle on state funded roads and bridges, you are exempting yourself for paying for their upkeep.
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And this is an extremely slippery slope of arguments. Similar arguments have popped up over here in California (Oregon even did a pilot program) where because the gas taxes are a fixed rate but fuel efficiency has actually increased less revenue is made from gasoline taxes, so every now and then ideas of a per-mile tax get floated around which enrages just about everyone out there. Now I can understand the whole usage/tax part, however the fee they set out of $200 per year is fucking outrageous. At 26 cents a gallon (Georgia's current tax rate on gasoline), that translates to using about 770 gallons of gasoline per year, and if you drive a 30MPG car that's good on mileage (which you probably would if you're buying an electric car) that translates to around 23000 miles of driving per year, granted for Georgia they have a much higher average rate, but even taking (18,900 per year on average) that into account they're slapping an assumption of about 24MPG is what people would get ignoring the fact that EVERYONE who uses electric cars sure as fuck are not going to drive that much per year in an electric car due to range limitations, this turns into an unjust tax on a particular group. I wouldn't be surprised if the only way this actually gets pushed through so quickly is because it's called a "fee" instead of a "tax", not sure of GA rules, but in CA taxes can only be added with voter approval.
 
Getting rid of the general incentives is good. If a vehicle is too expensive to justify on its own merits, then the manufacturer either needs to make it cost less or admit that no one wants it. They may want to re-think the fee, especially for those cars in areas where high-ozone is an issue. The cost of complying with EPA mandates could well exceed the $200 per car the fee will generate.

A different way to encourage electric car purchases is to get rid of the concept that each car has to have liability insurance. Ensure the driver for liability based on the most costly vehicle he/she owns from a liability stand point. All other vehicles are automatically covered for no additional cost. Collision and theft would continue to be on a per vehicle basis.
 
next-Jin said:
Oh cmon it has never been used in that way in probably decades lol
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Hmm... well actually in my area of GA (north Atlanta-ish), if there's something I do notice it's that they tend to occasionally actually work on paving roads... even repaving old ones. So I don't think they're necessarily doing nothing with the money. Pot holes eventually get filled sometimes and such...

But then again they can do better, so it's hard for me to tell how much the money is being put to actual good use.
 
Sounds fair to me. If you are going to use the roads, you better be contributing to their maintenance. Only an environmentally ideological zealot would argue against that.

Electric cars do very little for the environment anyways, especially compared to the high-MPG clean diesels and near-zero emission engines we have today due to the requirement to actually charge them. Of course, this heavily depends on where your energy is coming from. Until coal plants are replaced with natural gas, or the green-energy revolution we've been promised for 40 years actually happens, there's no reason to buy an electric/hybrid over an old-fashioned gas engine today, unless of course you just want to "feel" better about it.

However, and I think everyone would agree, no one should be subsidizing someone else's smugness.
 
Now we just need to do this in California (I won't hold my breath)
They even allow electric cars to use the carpool lanes with only one driver, which is one of the main reasons they sell so many out here.

Time to stop subsidizing these toys for the rich, and let them pay their own way.
 
next-Jin said:
Oh cmon it has never been used in that way in probably decades lol
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I have to rebut this with the following:

"Gas tax receipts are collected by the Georgia
Department of Revenue, put in the general fund,
then reimbursed to GDOT for project expenses.
· The money raised by the gas tax can finance only
road and bridge projects and maintenance of road
infrastructure. Projects can include building new
highways, widening existing highways repaving
roads , and fixing traffic signals.
· Money raised by the gas tax cannot go to transit."

I do agree the $200/year fee is high, given electric's current range capability, but I do feel there needs to be some way to capture lost fuel tax revenue on alternative fuel vehicles. They travel the same roads that fossil fuel burning vehicles travel and create the same wear and tear, so it is only equitable that they share the burden of maintenance.
 
mavrocket said:
Until coal plants are replaced with natural gas, or the green-energy revolution we've been promised for 40 years actually happens, there's no reason to buy an electric/hybrid over an old-fashioned gas engine today, unless of course you just want to "feel" better about it.
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I've read on here before that newer coal plants are actually very clean. It's some of the older ones with outdated technology that are the really bad ones. Don't know how much of that is true. Someone else said it, and said they had worked at one before.
 
mavrocket said:
Electric cars do very little for the environment anyways, especially compared to the high-MPG clean diesels and near-zero emission engines we have today due to the requirement to actually charge them. Of course, this heavily depends on where your energy is coming from. Until coal plants are replaced with natural gas, or the green-energy revolution we've been promised for 40 years actually happens, there's no reason to buy an electric/hybrid over an old-fashioned gas engine today, unless of course you just want to "feel" better about it.

However, and I think everyone would agree, no one should be subsidizing someone else's smugness.
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Forgot to link to the peer-reviewed paper about how electrics are not any better than gas/diesel:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/unclean-at-any-speed
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
I've read on here before that newer coal plants are actually very clean. It's some of the older ones with outdated technology that are the really bad ones. Don't know how much of that is true. Someone else said it, and said they had worked at one before.
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I've heard that as well. I also read that the problem with building the new ones is the prohibitive cost, and retrofitting the old ones are even more expensive to the point is not economically feasible.

I have nothing against fossil fuels, as I myself believe that anthropological climate change is nothing more than bull for people in places of power to extend that power. After all, the Mayans most likely were wiped out by a climate-change caused drought without a single coal-fired power plant or pickup to cause the disaster.
 
WA state is looking at the gas tax and how Hybrids and Electric vehicles pay less (or none) per mile than other vehicles. Personally, I don't feel that anyone should get a "credit" for buying an electric vehicle. It still contributes to wear and tear on the roadways. Plus, that electricity comes from somewhere, right? I has to be generated - coal, hydro, nuclear, solar, wind... I highly doubt that everyone who has an electric car as solar panels on their house used to charge their car.

There does need to be a balance somewhere. WA state is looking at a "pay per mile" fee / tax on each vehicle. Different types will pay different rates - so a big Suburban will pay more per mile than a Smart Car -- which they do now based on the tax on gas. As hybrids and electric cars become more common, the revenue from fuel sales that is used to maintain / build roadways will drop (already is in WA state). Exactly "how" to keep track of it all, remains to be figured out.
 
mavrocket said:
there's no reason to buy an electric/hybrid over an old-fashioned gas engine today, unless of course you just want to "feel" better about it.
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Disagree. It really depends of the type of driving you do.

If you are mainly driving open highways you might be correct, but my commute is all city driving during heavy rush hour traffic. Even when we visit relatives during the holidays we often run into slow traffic.

I have a Camry Hybrid (it's not a plugin or electric car), and average around 35MPG in town. That's twice the mileage I got out of my last non-hybrid 4 cyl Camry.
On the freeway we usually average around 42 to 45 mpg. That's still better than a non hybrid, although only by about 10% to 15%.

But that's the real problem, letting government decide what people should be driving. Stop the subsidies and let people buy/drive/pay for what is best/efficient for them. And yes, electric cars should have to pay for road upkeep, just like gas/diesel cars do However keep it simple with something like an annual fee, maybe based on range or battery size, don't complicate it by make all cars start paying a tax by the mile.
 
sfsuphysics said:
... instead they just insulted every single electric car owner by calling them yuppies...
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sfsuphysics, that wasn't a quote. Those are the author's words.

So critics argued that the tax break amounted to giving free cars to Atlanta yuppies.
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No quotation marks, no quote. Maybe he was paraphrasing? He didn't defint "critics" in any way so we don't actually know who he is attributing this "sentiment" to.
 
So you mean the guy buying a $100,000 Tesla Model S no longer has the support of the middle class to knock off an extra 5gs? I guess he totally wont buy it now!
 
Georgia resident here. Here's the facts:

Driving a Leaf is essentially free. It's around $200 a month to lease. The tax credit was for up to 20% of the costs to purchase or lease, or $5,000 whichever is less, and it carried over for up to five years if you didn't use all of the credit (example it would exceed your tax liability) So, if you used that credit to pay for your lease, you are driving 25 months for free. That's not even counting the money you save on gas.

Tons of people caught on to this, so now there's over 11,000 electric vehicles on the road here. Only California has more. It is also the #1 Leaf market in the country. You can't help but see several daily driving around Atlanta. There's also some variations of the credit for heavy duty alternative fuel vehicles, so a lot of delivery trucks here are hybrid or natural gas. (of course being a Republican state, that credit is staying) Anyhow, when you have thousands of people going electric it does start to eat into taxes, and just a few years ago the Atlanta metro shut down a bill to raise taxes for infrastructure improvements, so they had to find another way to get some of the money.
 
somecallmeTim said:
As hybrids and electric cars become more common, the revenue from fuel sales that is used to maintain / build roadways will drop (already is in WA state). Exactly "how" to keep track of it all, remains to be figured out.
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The problem is that traditional Hybrids still get all their power from gas, so they already pay gas taxes.
Fuel taxes pay for highways/freeways, and some diesel and gas cars get the same highway mileage as hybrids. It's mainly city driving that hybrids excel at, and city streets are generally paid with by local property taxes. So charging a fee for a traditional hybrid would be wrong.

Electric cars pay NO fuel taxes, so it's only fair that they have some type of fee to help pay for the roads.

Plug-in hybrids usually pay some fuel taxes depending of how much range they have. Most plug-in hybrids will use gas when traveling on a highway or on longer trip due to their much smaller batteries/range.

If they want for do this fairly, then they should base any fee on the published electric range of the car, exempting any car with a battery below a certain range (maybe anything less than 10 or 20 miles)
 
So now it's a gas subsidy on electric cars, nice one Goergia.
 
Expect to see this sort of thing happen more often, and if hybrid/electric becomes the norm expect some creative new ways to extract (more) money from them too. I'm surprised they having figured out how to tag/tax bicycles yet.
 
Ryokurin said:
Georgia resident here. Here's the facts:

Driving a Leaf is essentially free. It's around $200 a month to lease. The tax credit was for up to 20% of the costs to purchase or lease, or $5,000 whichever is less, and it carried over for up to five years if you didn't use all of the credit (example it would exceed your tax liability) So, if you used that credit to pay for your lease, you are driving 25 months for free. That's not even counting the money you save on gas.

Tons of people caught on to this, so now there's over 11,000 electric vehicles on the road here. Only California has more. It is also the #1 Leaf market in the country. You can't help but see several daily driving around Atlanta. There's also some variations of the credit for heavy duty alternative fuel vehicles, so a lot of delivery trucks here are hybrid or natural gas. (of course being a Republican state, that credit is staying) Anyhow, when you have thousands of people going electric it does start to eat into taxes, and just a few years ago the Atlanta metro shut down a bill to raise taxes for infrastructure improvements, so they had to find another way to get some of the money.
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That math doesn't even add up, not even close. A TAX Credit is a credit against taxes you would otherwise have to pay. No way in hell do you pay more in taxes on a car then you pay in purchase price. this is just absurd to even consider as correct. A leaf is a $30,000 car. Not a terribly expensive car to buy, not a huge lease cost either but sales Tax on the car still is going to amount to something like $2,100. 20% of $30,000 is $6,000 so in the case of the Leaf your getting the $5,000 off your $2,100 tax liability. Even if you get the full $5,000 you still have to pay the $2,100 in Taxes from it leaving you $2,900 toward your new car. If you lease that car for two years it would reduce your lease price by $121 dollars a month. I don't know what it costs to lease a $30,000 car cause I never lease cars, but I bet it costs enough that $121 off doesn't equate to free.
 
Ryokurin said:
Georgia resident here. Here's the facts:

Driving a Leaf is essentially free. It's around $200 a month to lease. The tax credit was for up to 20% of the costs to purchase or lease, or $5,000 whichever is less, and it carried over for up to five years if you didn't use all of the credit (example it would exceed your tax liability) So, if you used that credit to pay for your lease, you are driving 25 months for free. That's not even counting the money you save on gas.
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Based on what you said (quoted) up to 20% of the cost to purchase or lease, or $5000. If you only lease it for 36 months you're not getting $5000 you're getting 20% of the lease which is about $1400 (plus whatever upfront costs on lease). Now if the state simply gave a $5k credit and you were allowed to terminate your lease early but still keep the $5k that sounds like a problem with the GA legislation making retarded rebates with loopholes.
 
mavrocket said:
Electric cars do very little for the environment anyways, especially compared to the high-MPG clean diesels and near-zero emission engines we have today due to the requirement to actually charge them. Of course, this heavily depends on where your energy is coming from. Until coal plants are replaced with natural gas, or the green-energy revolution we've been promised for 40 years actually happens, there's no reason to buy an electric/hybrid over an old-fashioned gas engine today, unless of course you just want to "feel" better about it.
.
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It would be interesting to see an actual examination of this debate, because what I seem to notice is any comparison takes the output of your gasoline engine after cat. converter and compares that to the life of an electric car, including batteries, mining, disposal, ontop of production of electricity. Very rarely do you see the true environmental cost of gasoline, that means, cost of getting oil out of the ground, do you count saudi oil, fracking oil, tar sands, the cost of moving this oil in big super tankers across an ocean, then the cost of refining said oil into gasoline, then moving that gasoline to gas stations in tanker trucks, cost of maintenance on leaky gas storage and other issues, plus the percentage of tax payer money that goes to military conflicts/security in that regions we get oil from. I'm sure it adds up quite a bit more than whatever NO and CO2 comes out of your tailpipe.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Based on what you said (quoted) up to 20% of the cost to purchase or lease, or $5000. If you only lease it for 36 months you're not getting $5000 you're getting 20% of the lease which is about $1400 (plus whatever upfront costs on lease). Now if the state simply gave a $5k credit and you were allowed to terminate your lease early but still keep the $5k that sounds like a problem with the GA legislation making retarded rebates with loopholes.
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Read the Reddit link from a actual owner who says it costing him $50 a month.

Do I get the full $5k if I just lease it? YES, even those who lease will most likely get the full $5k tax credit. It's 20% of the "cost of the vehicle" or $5000, whichever is less. Given that Leaf's are +$30k you're most likely going to get the full amount. The "cost of the vehicle" isn't specified in the law so many worry that it only refers to the total of your lease payments. This is not true, it is either based on MSRP or more likely what you negotiated the price of the vehicle to be on your lease (plus tax and fees I believe). If you've never leased before then you negotiate just like you're buying and the set (by Nissan, monthly) interest rate and residual value will determine you payments. I recommend reading this if you've never leased http://www.leaseguide.com/lease07.htm[1] . Now I'm not 100% sure about this, but Nissan takes the $7500 federal tax credit off of the price of the car when you lease it (since Nissan is technically the owner of the car). They do this since the fed tax credit only applies to the buyer, the GA credit is for leasing or buying. Either way it reduces the cost by $7500 so you benefit from it. So the 20% may be calculated after the $7500 is subtracted. So if you get a base model for around $30k then the price is $22,500 which would give you a $4500 credit. Again, I'm not sure about this part, maybe someone else could comment. For me it didn't matter, since the price was around 33k plus tax and fees, making it at least $25k after the $7500 credit.
When will I get the money?
When you file your state income tax return, but beware that this is only a tax CREDIT, it's not a bonus payout so to get it you must at least owe $5k in taxes to GA. So if you pay little to no state income tax then you may not get it. If you only pay say $1k a year fear not, GA lets you collect the credit up to 5 years. So you'd get $1k back for 5 years. No it would not matter that you've turned in your lease after 2 years.
What prevents you from doing a yearly lease and getting $5k each year? Well, I don't think Nissan offers a year lease. But you could always get 2 cars, or 3. I may get another one, I don't know anyone who has done this but I see nothing in the law that limits this.
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somecallmeTim said:
There does need to be a balance somewhere. WA state is looking at a "pay per mile" fee / tax on each vehicle. Different types will pay different rates - so a big Suburban will pay more per mile than a Smart Car -- which they do now based on the tax on gas.
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Would they? That's not one argument I've ever heard for a per-mile surcharge, is a pay per mile per pound of vehicle surcharge. Would that mean delivery trucks would then pay even more too? So now all goods and services increase as a result.

As hybrids and electric cars become more common, the revenue from fuel sales that is used to maintain / build roadways will drop (already is in WA state). Exactly "how" to keep track of it all, remains to be figured out.
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how to keep track is easy, all cars will be required to have GPS tracking modules in them, and that will go over swell :)

Personally I think a per-mile revenue is beyond stupid. They should keep the same gas rates, and simply take money out of the general fund to make up the difference on road repairs. Why should only cars pay the roads? Buses & trucks use roads and you could easily argue any increase in taxes paid due to increase fuel usage does not off set the increased damage that's caused by increasing weight, a semi loaded up weighing 100,000 pounds is going to damage the roads WAY more than 50 - 2000 pounds cars driving over the same stretch of road and the 50 cars will use more fuel (hence pay more in taxes to fix the roads) than the 1 semi (they have bad mileage but it's not that horrible).

Sure continue to make gasoline/diesel users pay a bigger portion of road maintenance costs, but everyone uses the roads even if you walk everywhere, you eat food, where did that food come from?
 
GOOD! It made absolutely no sense and was NOT good for the environment.

Studies showed that people buying purely electric cars were buying then as 2nd and 3rd vehicles, not as pure replacements, and they weren't putting that many miles on them.

Secondly, most of the pure electric car owners were also quite wealthy, and didn't need to be subsidized as they were purchasing the vehicles not for practical reasons but as a statement.

This never should have gotten a subsidy, and if anything what they should have done is subsidized very fuel efficient vehicles, regardless if they are straight gas, hybrid, whatever, to low to middle income families, as for them it would take the place of the primary vehicle and be purchased in large enough quantities to make an actual environmental difference.

Its the actions of the 99% that matter, not the 1%ers taking an electric sports car out on the weekends.
 
Ryokurin said:
Read the Reddit link from a actual owner who says it costing him $50 a month.
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So sounds like GA law writers just left lots of loopholes that could be taken advantage of. Maybe if they removed that part about leasing they would have done better.
 
CA has the highest tax on a gallon of gas in the 50 States. They piss and moan about using less gas and emitting less pollution. So the feel good Libs go and buy hybrids and electrics. I am not a Lib but I did buy a Fusion Hybrid because I like it. (No tax break here)

Now our illustrious Gubernor pisses and moans because the high mileage cars are cutting into the tax revenue, so he raised the tax on a gallon of gas by three cents. Now he is pissing and moaning and wants to charge drivers by the miles driven.

The problem, as it is all over, the AH politician's steal the taxes earned from gasoline sales and spend it frivolously on BS projects, not road repair. CA has some of the worst roads in the country. Pot holes, cracks, sink holes, total BS.

This guy (Brown) is a total dipstick. We are out of water here, predictions are about a years supply left. He wants to build a multi billion dollar train to nowhere. He has allocated 6 billion to flood control project. The Bay bridge is a fiasco, cracked Chinese steel beams, brittle span bolts holding the road together, and the base of the towers are flooded with salt water because of improper caulking. The radar warning system on top of the towers failed and cost 4 million to repair. And last but not least they are spending 6 million plus to move the birds from the old structure so they can tear it down.

So lets screw the tax payer, Tax, Tax Tax, Spend spend, spend. How about building some desalination plants idiots. To little too late.
 
Good. Hopefully this will slow the eventual rise of the gas tax which is likely inevitable as cars become more fuel efficient and the revenue from the gas tax decreases. Plus, screw hippies and their fugly electric cars. Pushing out more clean diesles and making them available in all wheel drive, smaller pickups, cross over suv's, etc is a much better plan as long as they don't cost 40-60k. That is freaking rediculous for a car.
 
good god thats crooked and it happens every day.

oh you aren't buying gas and paying tax so we are going to tax you.

Taxation without representation? IDK, but our government is totally fucked
 
so people saying this tax is 'fair', what is next? a $200 tax on people who primarily uses bicycles? or what about people who mostly walk, instead of using a vehicle? are they going to get taxed too b/c they use roads and sidewalks etc?
 
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