Worst state to own an electric vehicle: Georgia

Living Off the Grid in the City Radio Show. In addition to the traditional $20 vehicle registration fee; the backward state of Georgia charges electric vehicle owners a whopping $212.78. This has been in effect since 2015, and the current additional fees are ‘automatically adjusted’ according to a ‘statutory formula’ applicable to vehicles registered on or after July 1, 2019. This appears to mean that the fee will go up with a mysterious formula that most people can’t access, and certainly did not vote on.
The greedy state of Georgia says it distributes the revenues from these extra fees for so-called “transportation purposes”; including roads, bridges, public transit, rails, airports, buses, seaports, and accompanying infrastructure and services necessary to provide access to these facilities, and for paying general obligation debt and other multiyear financing obligations. This jargon sounds to me like the state just found a new tax revenue for just about anything it wants to use it for, and to avoid taxing the rich.
This extra fee is the absolute highest in the nation, as of this writing, and it clearly targets the poor and middle classes for abuse or exclusion. Many to be EV owners are not even told of this high fee before they purchase their EV in Georgia. And, the poor and middle classes can barely afford to purchase these expensive vehicles without the exuberant annual fees, let alone with those extremely high fees tacked on every year. In a 10-year period, that fee would add to $2,127.80; if the fees don’t automatically increase in that period.
By HVB
7/7/2023
Living Off the Grid in the City
For Sparky Alternative Energies and Aerospace