Drivers agree to $250 reimbursement for an electric car, but say they need to fix the roads!

The choice of buying an electric car in New Jersey will become more expensive this summer as the state implements a new registration fee for zero-emission vehicles.

That $250 annual fee for electric vehicle buyers — which will increase by $10 a year to $290 — will go into effect July 1 as part of a larger plan to fund road repairs in the Garden State.

Earlier this spring, news of the new EV tax was met with skepticism among both car dealers and environmentalists, who worry that car buyers will be discouraged from going the clean vehicle route in the future.

But a new poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University shows more people may agree to the fee than expected.

The poll, released Wednesday, found that a total of 65% of New Jersey voters supported the additional fees for electric vehicle owners, while 29% were opposed.

More Republican voters supported the reimbursement than Democrats.

“People in New Jersey generally want policies to combat climate change. They also generally want road maintenance and they want to fund NJ Transit. The question is how do we make those trade-offs,” Dan Cassino, Fairleigh Dickinson professor of government and politics, told NJ Advance Media on Wednesday.

Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration previously said the electric car fee was based on an annual cost of $267 calculated by the Eastern Transportation Coalition, which the owner of a gas-powered vehicle pays annually in federal and state fuel taxes.

Cassino linked the $300 number referenced in the survey question (pictured above) to an amount referenced by the bill’s sponsors to install the fee.

By renewing the state’s Transportation Trust Fund – which finances major state and interstate construction projects for highways, bridges and mass transit in the state – the state expects to raise a total of $15.6 billion over five years to support the capital projects from the Department of Transportation and NJ Transit.

In addition to the new EV fee, that money will also come from increasing the current gas tax of 42.3 cents per gallon by 1.9 cents per year for five years.

There is ample evidence of our crumbling roads and transport sector more broadly. From the range of pothole repairs, part of an annual tradition, to the more than $2.8 billion recently announced for road construction projects both large and small.

More about the results

A total of 809 registered voters were surveyed by telephone or online from April 1 to 8.

Cassino said the poll results on the new electric car fee seem to indicate that “when push comes to shove, voters care more about maintaining the roads.”

Pamela Frank, the CEO of ChargEVC-NJ, instead emphasized that conversations about the new fee and writing EVs at scale should be much more nuanced.

“What people saw in the poll was a yes/no question about whether to impose a fee – no nasty questions about 1) whether the proposed fee was the right amount and 2) at what point in reaching a certain market share compensation should be charged. be implemented,” Frank said on Wednesday.

ChargEVC-NJ — a nonprofit trade and research coalition made up of climate advocates, nonprofits, utilities and electric vehicle companies — has instead advocated for a $75 per year registration fee for electric vehicles.

Frank noted that the $250 fee was established based on what lawmakers determined to be the average miles per gallon for a car today.

Right now, she said, based on the roughly six million light-duty cars in New Jersey, that average was tied to what’s most on the road: older gas-powered cars.

“That turns out to be something like a 2006 Toyota Corolla. Now you ask yourself: what is the equal treatment for an EV driver?” Frank asked. ‘Should you pin them on a very inefficient 2006 car? Or should you peg them to something more similar to what they’re driving, like a Prius Prime as an example? Guess How Much a Prius Prime Pays to the Transportation Trust Fund? About $90 a year.”

READ MORE:

Where are electric vehicles more popular in New Jersey? A breakdown by province.

NJ could hit electric car owners with new rates starting this summer

NJ car dealers are ready to sell more electric vehicles. There is simply little demand.

Say goodbye to the sales tax credit for purchasing electric vehicles in NJ

In a very different response to the poll, Eric DeGesero, executive vice president of the Fuel Merchants Association of New Jersey, said he was reassured by Fairleigh Dickinson’s results.

“EVs do not pay gas taxes and are currently exempt from paying sales taxes, yet they cause heavy wear and tear on our roads and bridges due to the excessive weight of their car batteries,” DeGesero said in a statement.

“As our state looks to fund the Transportation Trust Fund in the coming years,” he said, “it only makes sense to ensure that owners of expensive electric vehicles pay their fair share.”

In addition to the new electric car fee, clean car advocates are concerned that the loss of an electric car tax credit over the next three years will hurt sales in New Jersey, where electric car registrations recently surpassed 150,000.

From 2035, the state will require all new car sales to be fully electric.

Nevertheless, another study conducted by Rutgers University and published in February found that some drivers do not want to make the switch to electric vehicles at all, preferring to stick with vehicles with combustion engines.

Fairleigh Dickinson officials said in the poll on Wednesday: “The simple sampling error for 809 registered voters in New Jersey is +/- 3.5 percentage points, at a 95 percent confidence interval.”

Read more about the latest survey results by clicking here.

NJ Advance Media staff writer Larry Higgs contributed to this report.

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Steven Rodas can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @stevenrodasnj.