California Road Charge - Thoughts?

Agree 100%

 

Become ungovernable, register your car in another state, etc.

 

Ah yes, the ultimately impossible end run! For most anyways for sure.

 

One time ~200$ setup for 11 year or older vehicles, done online, for at least one state that offers it. Yearly sub 100$ registration for newer vehicles. The more expensive option is property in another state with the fail over to be a “resident” there as well. These are both relatively common in my area, where it makes financial sense to do so. Here a common cost is a metro area based registration fee and people find creative ways to register outside the metro area to save 500-1000$ a year. Additional taxes will have people making more creative solutions. Choosing to stay in California is its own interesting choice though.

 

Why don’t they JUST charge the ev drivers a road charge?

There are enough zealots that believe in mythical carbon based climate change who will support this. Very sadly

 

Washington charges yearly ev tab registration extra amounts due to not paying gasoline tax for that reason. Gasoline tax is the holy general fund here haha.

 

Here's my initial registration for the 2024 Model Y. Next year the plate and title fee should drop off
I don't see an EV fee here but maybe Tesla rolled that into the purchase order.

 

I think it’s goofy and they get you on the annual renewal but not the first year. A bunch of my relatives have paid it a few times and the price seems to have fluctuated from 150$ to 225$ now back to 150$. If they’re in the RTA area they were all complaining they had like 1300$ annual tabs because of it haha.

 

Good god, what's the RTA area?

 

Show yours!

 

Haha if you register your car within this region you pay crazy annual tab fees, like a 40k Toyota is 500$ extra, 80k car would be double that etc.

 

Crazy! I think @Green Thunder and others have got around this through the >6k lb vehicle weight rule

 

Yeah there was a two year window where it worked and now the state caught on, only worked for Trucks due to how they’re classified whereas a heavy SUV wouldn’t work. A 2500/3500 truck though immediately qualifies. Best option is to move hahaha.

What “good” currently looks like in this state:

 

Ha, no kidding.
Yeah, that's about what I pay on the Tundra iirc

 

omg!

And I was pissed my new to me Tundra was $800

 

So if you got your tabs dropped in the past, are you grandfathered or screwed at your next renewal?

 

People should be good to go since it’s a permanent registration change (your curb weight is changed to be higher than 6000lbs). I guess technically they could “review” prior changes but this is the WA government lol. I would imagine if you sold it the curb weight would transfer too, should require quite a premium as its a “pre ban” Tundra!

 

My state allegedly has no state sales tax; yet I paid a 'use tax' when I registered my '21 as a new purchase in state... 4 years of registration was about $550


*** I do pay fairly high tax rate at the pump though ***