Project Summary
This study fulfills Section 48 of Senate Bill (SB) 1, which states that the University of California, Davis will conduct a study “that makes recommendations on potential methodologies to raise revenue from zero-emission and low-emission vehicle owners to achieve the state’s transportation electrification, clean air, and climate targets established under law while also ensuring those vehicle owners pay their fair share of any costs borne by motorists to fund improvements to the transportation system.” The project will assess the impact of the new registration fee for zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) enacted by SB 1, both on potential revenue gains as well as implications for adoption of the technology. We will forecast potential revenue gains under different scenarios of ZEV adoption with a business as usual scenario in which gasoline vehicles would continue to dominate the California fleet. This will be a long-term assessment of the fee structure and its future implications for transportation infrastructure funding as ZEV adoption continues to grow over the next 20 years. We will also investigate the effect of the presence of the registration fee and whether it affects potential vehicle sales. Estimates of impacts will be based on two approaches: 1) past responses to vehicle fee changes in California and other states that have adopted registration fees and 2) survey responses from owners of electric vehicles to estimate whether or not a fee would have altered their decision to purchase the vehicle. Secondly, the project will assess a broad array of alternative revenue raising mechanisms. These include a vehicle charging electricity tax, an energy-equivalent based fee, and a road charge fee.