ICEs aren't taxed to punish their externalities, but to finance roads.
Suffice it to say that if all cars magically became EVs something in the tax code would have to change to pay for road maintence.
True. There would need to be a registration fee of about 100 bucks. The rest is paid for by everyone, driver or not. Gas taxes don’t even come close.
You're not covering for the loss of the gas tax with $100/year registration.
Nowhere close.
In my corner of America the gas tax comes out to be $0.96/gal, or $480/year if you only drive 15k miles and average 30 mpg.
That's because, I assume, you are adding in state gas tax, then comparing state registration to the proposed federal registration? Or some other combination. Somehow you are mixing and matching. We're all talking about federal taxes only. Obviously it's all different for every state.
Federal gas tax is $0.18. Gas registration is $0. New EV registration is $250. Or actually, it's looking like $500 now. That's like you driving your 30 mpg gas car 83,000 miles a year.