An electric car is charged at an EV charging station near Spadina Ave/Bloor St in Toronto on March 6.Laura Proctor/The Globe and Mail
Alberta will charge EV owners $200 a year [starting in 2025, saying EVs tend to be heavier and therefore] more difficult on the roads. Are electric cars really so heavy that they chew up the roads? How much heavier are they? – Bruce, Lethbridge
Alberta wants EV owners to shoulder their own weight when it comes to paying for road maintenance — but battery electric passenger vehicles, while significantly heavier than their gas-powered counterparts, are far from the heaviest vehicles funds on the way, experts said.
“For pavement, the biggest cause of damage is large haul trucks,” Kevin Hayslip, director of the University of Tennessee Center for Transportation Research, said in an email.
Alberta’s latest budget added a $200 annual tax on EV owners that it says will cover the extra wear and tear on the roads. The province said the fee is designed to reflect the amount of fuel tax paid annually by the typical Alberta driver.
Electric cars won’t make roads fall apart faster, but our love of heavier cars is causing problems
So how much heavier are EVs than similar gas-powered vehicles?
Heaslip told Politifact last year that electric cars often weigh 30 percent more than comparable gas-powered vehicles because of their batteries.
For example, the 2024 Hyundai Kona weighs 1,385 kilograms (3,053 pounds), while the 2024 Kona Electric weighs 1,705 kilograms (3,758 pounds), or about 23 percent more.
But as consumers flock to trucks and SUVs, many gas-guzzling cars on the road weigh more than the Kona EV.
“If you look at Alberta’s light truck sales figures, they’ve moved from approximately 65 per cent [truck and SUV] sales in 2005 to 93 percent at the end of 2023,” said Daniel Breton, CEO of Electric Mobility Canada, a Montreal-based national non-profit that promotes EV ownership. “As EV batteries become more efficient, I expect all EVs will eventually become lighter than comparable gas-powered vehicles.”
But for now, they’re quite a bit bigger than their gas-powered counterparts.
For example, a gas-powered Ford F-150 weighs between 1,824 and 2,274 kilograms (4,021 and 5,013 pounds). The heaviest F-150 Lightning EV, by comparison, weighs 3,130 kilograms (6,900 pounds).
But even smaller cars are heavier than they used to be. For example, a 2024 Honda Civic sedan weighs nearly 227 kilograms (500 pounds) more than a 2000 Honda Civic sedan.
However, transport trucks are much heavier than passenger vehicles, whether they are electric or gas powered. Depending on their weight, they cause hundreds to thousands of times more damage to roads than passenger vehicles, Breton said.
“Damage due to cars, for practical purposes when we design pavements, is essentially zero,” Kareem Chatti, a civil engineer at Michigan State University, told Inside Science in 2020.
Who pays for the roads?
Revenue from the gas tax, which now stands at nine cents a litre, is not specifically earmarked for roads — it goes into Alberta’s general revenue, which funds roads and other programs, Alberta’s finance ministry said in an email.
The $200 EV tax, which is due to start next year and will be added to annual vehicle registrations, is “in line with the estimated annual fuel tax paid by the driver of a typical internal combustion vehicle in Alberta,” said Savannah Johansen , Alberta Finance Spokesperson.
“Government can and should be concerned about the decline in overall revenue as more vehicles stop using gas and thus stop paying gas tax,” said Blake Shaffer, associate professor of economics and public policy at the University of Calgary, in email.
But a single tax on all EVs treats a Nissan Leaf that’s driven 5,000 kilometers a year the same as an electric Hummer that’s driven 25,000 kilometers a year, Shaffer said.
Instead of an annual flat tax just for EVs, the Alberta government should impose an annual registration fee on all vehicles — gas and electric — based on mileage and weight, Shaffer said.
“It will better target the damage vehicles are doing on the roads and be a more robust and fair structure as we move away from gas-powered vehicles,” Shaffer said.
Electric Mobility Canada’s Breton said $200 a year won’t discourage Albertans from buying electric cars, but he thinks a fee based on weight and mileage for all vehicles would be fairer.
“If we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, whether it’s more people taking transit or buying electric cars or buying more fuel-efficient cars … the less gas tax we’re going to get,” Breton said . “But [the $200] it is not about justice; it is a political message. If it was about fairness, we would have a broader discussion and talk about health impacts [and costs] of gas vehicles.”
Saskatchewan introduced a $150 annual EV surcharge in 2021. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nunavut are the only jurisdictions that do not currently offer or plan to offer provincial EV rebates in addition to the $5,000 federal rebate.
“Now is not the time for a tax on electric cars; it’s time to encourage adoption,” Joanna Kyriazis, director of public affairs at Clean Energy Canada, a clean energy think tank at Simon Fraser University, said in an email. “Health Canada estimates that the socioeconomic costs of air pollution-related health impacts per year are about $120 billion, to which gas-powered vehicles contribute significantly—and electric vehicles help alleviate—so the cost of every type of vehicle to society is not equal.”
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