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by wtn 2348 days ago
That would require vehicle tracking, and people in the US don't want that. Fuel taxes only work for vehicles that use internal combustion engines. A tire tax is a possible vehicle-neutral option.
6 comments

A tire tax would incentivize people to drive on worn tires longer.
In any large US city you need an electronic toll pass for bridges and etc. or get billed by license plate. So tracking is in place already.
You'd still need some way to map the tire tax to location of utilization, though. There's no real point in applying a congestion charge to people living in rural areas w/no access to public transit who have to drive to work, it won't have any beneficial impact. Regressive taxation, sort of like sales taxes.
https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/...

It’s my understanding Tesla uses this for traffic data for the in vehicle UX.

The tracking already happens via numerous license plate readers, especially if the road is already tolled.
Electric and ICE both pay the same road tolls/tax. Carbon tax is orthogonal.