To the editor:
“Voltage Valley”? Currently, electric vehicle (EV) registration fees are the resistance. Starting in 2020, Ohio started charging a disproportional and, frankly, unfair additional licensing fee for hybrid and electric vehicles of $100 and $200, respectively.
For our two Chevy Volts, I’ll be paying an extra $400 per year because of this fee. Since the Volt is a plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV) and also uses gas as well as electric, we are actually being triple taxed: for the gas, for the electric, and the extra license fee.
For the amount we drove in 2020, that equates to paying more than a 20 miles per gallon car would pay in gas taxes, and even that 20 mpg is well below the national average of 24.9 mpg. Many conventional cars even exceed that figure and are paying even less in gas tax for the given miles driven.
The Ohio gasoline tax was never increased over the years proportional to the improvements in vehicle mpg. Why all of a sudden tack on a huge fee for cars that burn little or no gas and currently make up only 0.22% of all cars on the road in Ohio?
If the Mahoning Valley is poised to become “Voltage Valley” with Lordstown Motors and the LG/GM Ultium battery plant, then Ohio and our lawmakers need to leverage the power we entrusted in them and normalizing these fees to promote and not penalize current and potential EV owners.
Dave Krawchyk,
Leetonia
