Taxpayers subsidize electric car owners

DEAR EDITOR:

On June 19, 2003 there was an article in the Penticton Herald about electric cars. My garage, Maxwell’s Auto Service was the first place in B.C. in the current era to sell electric vehicles. There were no subsidies, incentives or free charging stations to promote sales. I was on my own.

A two-seater and then a four-door sedan was purchased by Ernie and Elvena Slump, who later donated it to our high school automotive class. It was recently seen in the high school recycle container in pieces. I assume it was studied over the years and finally recycled.

Finally to my point of this letter, we have all read the articles on the pros and cons of how green the modern electric cars really are what with mining, manufacturing, and final disposal taken into consideration. But let’s think about the fact that the taxpayers gave great subsidies to people who could afford to purchase these vehicles, then we let them recharge for free on the taxpayers money, and now there is the problem that we, the taxpayer, are again subsidizing owners of electric vehicles by them not contributing to the road tax to build and maintain our highways. This road tax is charged on fuel at the gas pump and is currently not shared equally by all the vehicles on the road.

One way to fairly charge this fee would be to add a tax on kilometres travelled each year at license renewal for all electric vehicles so they will share in the expense of road maintenance. I wonder how long it will take the different levels of government to catch up on this inequality?

Remember that the more electric vehicles on the road means the gasoline and diesel vehicles need to pay more to make up for this shortfall. Many of us will continue to repurchase gas or diesel vehicles as not everyone can afford an electric vehicles $40000 to $80,000 price tag.

Doug Maxwell

Penticton