From my Tesla Economist comment.
I’m speaking from my viewpoint as a So. Californian, where cars are woven into the fabric of society. This view is about externalities that will have a major effect on the future of all of the vehicles and TaaS in the future.
In So. Cal. gasoline is about $4 a gallon; higher than most other states. Some states it’s under $3 a gallon. The motorist pays a heavy state and federal tax on fuel. When EVs replace ICEVs, all those revenues will be *gone.* The governments will have to distribute the costs of maintaining the transpo infrastructure over the EVs without any help from fuel taxes.
The costs of maintaining the transpo infrastructure will not go down if the number of licensed vehicles decreases. The drop in fees and taxes on licensed vehicles and fuel will have to be made up some way, the state or municipal governments may have to sell off unused properties such as half the lanes of dozen laned highways to real estate developers, to be used for storage? And this doesn’t consider what will happen to the few toll roads that So Cal has, but are much more common in other big cities.
It looks to me like the only equitable way of distributing the taxes is by the mile. The car owners who use their car the least are not going to pay as much as those who use their car mostly for TaaS. Before, the more you drove, the more you would pay for fuel taxes. But it won’t be possible to charge by the kWh because you can charge your car from a regular outlet so how could anyone know whether your kWh’s were for the car or for the home?
Right now if I own a pickup truck, I don’t have to pay commercial fees if it has a camper shell. If it doesn’t, then I have to pay $10 or so for yearly commercial license fees – not a lot, it depends on the weight class. But anyone who uses their vehicle for commercial purposes – like a taxi – has to have commercial license plates. So I assume that all the Tesla owned vehicles for TaaS would be paying commercial fees.
The big hatchet in this scenario is what happens when the TaaS causes the number of licensed vehicles to decline. The state vehicle registration fees are hundreds of dollars a year, and the costs will have to be increased as the number of vehicles declines.
One can see that this is adding more costs per mile that have to be considered when owning a vehicle.
The costs may stay the same for minimum required insurance, but since most cars are financed, they’re required to be fully insured, or over a thousand dollars a year. Since Tesla would own the cars outright they would not be required to pay full coverage, only minimum insurance. There will be a lot of loss of income for auto insurance companies as the number of vehicles declines.
There will be a lot of changes to mass transportation as buses and trains are electrified or weaned from fossil fuels. Will the mass transportation vehicles be autonomous? Will the buses become smaller as the demand for ride hailing increases, causing the demand for mass transportation and number of riders to drop?
There are other externalities that must be considered. There needs to be a diagram to chart out as many of these as can be known prior to the EV changeover.
