When the Rubber Meets the Road
Delaware Democrats are gung-ho for electric vehicles when they’re legislating. They sing a different tune when the rubber meets the road.
DelDOT is worried about revenue, so it’s imposing new registration fees for EVs. This solution makes owning an electric vehicle more costly, thereby disincentivizing EV ownership – while at the same time incentivizing their purchase with tax breaks. Think about that for a minute, because they obviously haven’t.
EV owners should shell out, DelDOT says, because EVs don’t pay any fuel tax, and fuel taxes supply 20% of DelDOT’s revenue.
A study of the impact of fuel-efficient and electric vehicles on the state budget published last year by the University of Delaware found that, if current adoption rates continued, the state could lose an estimated $1 billion in revenue from the motor fuel tax between 2030 and 2050.
That’s a big, scary number, $1 billion. Much scarier than $50 million per year, which is the annual average. In reality, though, it would start out lower five years from now, and grow through 2050, when most of the people running DelDOT will be retired on their state pensions. And that’s not even taking into account inflation. An unknown variable that significant makes a 25-year projection something between a guess and a fantasy.
Granted, DelDOT will need to raise revenue somehow. They’ve already increased tolls, which is easy because a large percentage is paid by vehicles traveling through, mainly on the interstate but also on the beach road.
What else might they do instead of adding to the financial burden of owning an EV? The obvious answer: Raise the tax on gasoline. But that would be harder for lawmakers, because right now Delawareans are enjoying a 25-cent-a-gallon tax break, as they learn when they go to the pumps in neighboring states.
DelDOT’s justification for raising tolls was that surrounding states already have. But when those states raised their fuel taxes a few years ago, Delaware left theirs unchanged at around half their rates.
Delaware: 23 cents
Maryland: 45 cents
New Jersey: 42 cents
Pennsylvania: 58 cents
In short, Delawareans don’t cross state lines to get cheaper gas, and wouldn’t even if the state doubled its tax rate. Delaware’s gasoline tax brought in $137 million in FY2025. By doubling its rate Delaware could raise $274 million a year. They would never raise the tax so much so fast, but they wouldn’t have to.
DelDOT says EV registrations are growing by 1,000 a month, another number that sounds scarier out of context. The number of electric vehicles in Delaware, by category, as of 2023:
8,400 full EVs
3,800 plug-in hybrids (PHEV)
22,900 hybrid EVs
Keep in mind that the latter two categories still use some fuel, but even if they didn’t we’re talking about 35,000 vehicles. Add another 25,000 for the past two years and you’re up to 60,000. Compare that to the number of fossil fuel vehicles:
791,300 gasoline
14,200 diesel
Taxing EVs at $100 to $150 apiece, depending on weight, DelDOT will raise about $6 million a year. Raising the gasoline tax by a penny would raise the same amount, and who would notice? As EV ownership rises year by year, the tax would have to increase year by year as well, but if we’re trying to incentivize EV ownership, that’s exactly what we should want. The higher the cost of gas, the greater the incentive to switch over.
Last time I checked, getting people into EVs was the Democrats’ proclaimed goal. Remember, there’s a state mandate to boost EV new car sales to 43% for the 2027 model year and 82% by 2032 – mandates Democratic Gov. Matt Meyer says he will scrap.
Meyer, nominally a Democrat, says he doesn’t like government mandates, which is par for the Castle Republican course. The alternative is incentives. Insurance, repairs and electricity are all more costly for EV owners – why would you add to the expense if you want people to buy them?
Given these facts, this registration fee can only be seen as punitive. The state’s justification: Most other states have one. Uh-huh. As long as we’re comparing, most other states also have higher gas taxes than Delaware, too.
The state doesn’t need to throw EV owners under their own vehicles, so why does it want to?
Brings back memories.
As in this quote from Our PAL Val:
“I can’t even spell gas tax.”
One of the few times she told the truth.
So DNREC incentivizes EV purchases through a rebate program, but then after the vehicle is purchased, DelDOT charges an extra. Overall, the state is much better off if more folks drive EVs. There should be a better solution.
Unlike most state agencies, DelDOT raises its own cash, so it has a greater degree of independence.
Meyer could sort this out if he wants to do the right thing. I’m not holding my breath.
C’mon. You don’t think that DelDOT has carte blanche to approve such a hike on its own without clearance from the Gov’s Office, do you? Everything of that magnitude gets OK’d by the gov’s team. Meyer absolutely knew about it and approved.
No, I don’t think that at all. But by not having to beg for money from the GA they get less scrutiny.
As the last sentence of my comment indicated, of course Meyer is culpable. That’s why I pointed out that he’s a Castle Republican, not a true Democrat.
I voted for him because my position has always been that I’ll vote for a non-loonball Republican over a crooked Democrat like BHL. I voted for Castle over that Lewes loonball he ran against, too.
I’m a Democrat because there’s no point in registering as an independent in a closed-primary state, or as a Socialist anywhere.
Yup. Bought a hybrid for my wife in November. Got a card about the new fee. Went into the trash
If I remember about the gas tax many years ago the GA in all its brilliance wanted its cake, pie, petit fours and cookies and wanted a 15 cent tax right up from back when we were recovering from the great recession. Instead of 2 cents one year, 2 the next, 3 the following etc they wanted too much at once
The EV tax does not account for annual miles driven, unlike the gas tax, which depends on how much you drive and how efficient your car is. My family drives each of our two cars about 6000 miles/year. My Subaru Outback gets about 28 mpg average: which is 214 gallons/year. The tax of $0.23 x 214 is about $50 per year. The Outback weighs the same as my EV. I will have to pay an EV tax that is more than double the gas tax on my Outback, for the same annual mileage. I am also paying Delmarva Power about $300/year to charge it; another expense my gas car doesn’t have.
All true. I’m out of the country half the year; at my last vehicle registration I found I had driven 4,000 miles in two years. At 33 mpg that’s about 60 gallons of gas per year. Chances I’ll replace my aging Mini with an EV: Zero.
The notion that it’s up to individuals rather than government to deal with climate change is straight-up bullshit. So you’re a disengaged voter, who do you vote for – the people who want you to take the financial hit of owning an EV, or the people who pretend there is no climate change and therefore aren’t asking you to spend anything? We got our answer last year.
Your twice-annual transatlantic flights are significantly worse than your 2000 mile annual car mile average: https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx
Engaging in that kind of discretionary consumption and then saying that it’s the government’s responsibility comes off a bit….hypocritical. Your narrative about climate change is 25 years old. This is not like banning CFCs where we just had to change refrigerants-our standard of living didn’t change, and most people didn’t have to think of it- they just replaced their havac or refrigerator when it came due. Our standard of living is extremely carbon intense and there are no good substitutes. The only valid narrative moving forward is of extreme sacrifice- moving people en-masse to dense urban centers, wholesale banning of private cars, strict limits on square footage of living spaces, and enforcing draconian limits on heating and cooling.
But even though that’s the only viable solution, corpadems continue to push this narrative that EVs and heat pumps will lets us have our cake and eat it too. Keep fiddling with those dials, chump.
I’m well aware of the carbon footprint of air travel. I wasn’t citing my gasoline consumption to brag about a small carbon footprint. That’s a mug’s game. I was demonstrating that the EV fee would cost me a lot more than a gas tax hike.
BTW, those calculators aren’t accurate anyway. On a typical flight, cargo weighs more than the passengers.
You want to curb air traffic, cut down on business travel, which is 25-30% of the total. You could accomplish that simply by making it no longer tax-deductible.
That would do a whole lot more than me staying in America and living apart from my wife.
Well with my average EZ Pass bill and my new registration tax it will cost me $500 a year just to drive my car and I work from home and put shit on for miles. I now DESPISE democrats and will for the first time in my life will vote republican strictly on the HATRED of democrat hypocrisy.
I understand the anger, but of course that won’t solve the problem.
I’d love to see the math on that. If you are driving a reasonably priced EV (<$100K) it'll cost you an extra $110. This leaves $380 for tolls. If your irregular drive were driving from Wilmington to the beaches it would be about 24 roundtrips during the course of the year to reach your $500 (and there are, of course, alternative toll-free routes). This doesn't even account for the fact that your EZ Pass bill was already more than $280/year doing the same route. So is the issue that you are driving a big expensive electric truck or that you are full of crap and never really voted for Democrats anyway?
Could DiMaio and Dan Cruce be the same person?
That would explain all those trips to the beach…
“If you are driving a reasonably priced EV (<$100K) it'll cost you an extra $110." Yet it shouldn't cost you an extra anything at all.
If this were in the form of a $0.01/gallon gas tax increase, this same guy would be bitching/turfing on that.
This fee at least has the advantage of eliminating the free rider argument.
We can’t be sure of that. We don’t even know if that’s his real name, but if it is, there’s someone by that name on Facebook who doesn’t appear to be Republican in any way.
The “free rider” argument is Republican bullshit. The fee is set at a level that would raise as much as the gas tax on a vehicle that get 25 mpg driving over 10,000 miles per year. Anyone who drives less than that is getting gouged.
The money doesn’t go to road repair anyway. The gas tax is 20% of the DelDOT budget. EV owners pay their share of the other 80% when they pay tolls and taxes. They aren’t getting any free ride.
Either you’re encouraging EV ownership or you’re not. We’re not.
I live in Kent County and when I go to Maryland, which has a higher gas tax, the price is the same as in Delaware, sometimes lower. If the state needs to increase road revenue & reduce accidents why not put speed cameras on Route 1 & I-95. If you drive the speed limit on any of our highways you will be passed by nearly every vehicle. I find it especially annoying when state vehicles, school buses & state police (with no flashing lights) & state legislators are exceeding the speed limits.
I’m surprised there wasn’t more outrage when the tolls were increased by 50% on Route 1 & I-95.
God forbid you increase the gas tax which most people have no idea what the amount is.