Drivers are OK with $250 electric car fee, but say fix the roads!

Opting to buy an electric car in New Jersey will get more expensive this summer, as the state rolls out a new registration fee for zero emission vehicles.

That annual $250 fee for electric vehicle buyers — which will increase by $10 a year until reaching $290 — is set to start July 1 as part of a larger plan to fund road fixes in the Garden State.

Earlier this spring, news of the new EV fee was met with skepticism among car dealers and environmentalists alike who worry car buyers will be discouraged from going the clean vehicle route going forward.

But a new Fairleigh Dickinson University poll shows more people may be on board with the fee than expected.

The poll, released Wednesday, showed overall 65% of New Jersey voters supported the additional fees on electric vehicle owners, with 29% opposed.

More Republican voters supported the fee 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 we make those trade-offs,” Dan Cassino, a professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson, told NJ Advance Media on Wednesday.

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

Cassino linked the $300 number referenced in the poll question (pictured above) to a figure pointed to by sponsors of the bill to install the fee.

By renewing the state Transportation Trust Fund — which finances major state and interstate highway, bridge, and transit construction projects in the state — the state expects to raise a total of $15.6 billion over five years to support Department of Transportation and NJ Transit capital projects.

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

There’s ample evidence of our crumbling roadways and transportation sector more broadly. From the gamut of pothole repairs, part of an annual tradition, to more than $2.8 billion recently announced for road construction projects both big and small.

More on the results

In all, 809 registered voters were polled from April 1 to April 8 either by phone or online.

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

Pamela Frank the chief executive officer of ChargEVC-NJ, instead emphasized that conversations on the new fee and electric cars writ-large should be much more nuanced.

“What folks saw in the poll was a yes/no question about whether to impose a fee — not more tedious questions about 1) whether the proposed fee was the right amount and 2) at what point in achieving a particular market share should a fee be implemented,” Frank said Wednesday.

ChargEVC-NJ — a not-for-profit trade and research coalition made up of climate advocates, non-profits, utilities and electric vehicle companies — has advocated for a $75-a-year EV registration fee instead.

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

Right now, she said, based on the approximate 6 million light duty cars in New Jersey, that average was tied to what’s mostly on the road: older gas-powered cars.

“That comes out to be something like a 2006 Toyota Corolla. Now you ask yourself, what is the equivalent treatment for an EV driver?” Frank asked. “Should you pin them to a 2006 very inefficient car? Or should you pin them to something more like what they drive, like a Prius Prime as an example? Guess how much a Prius Prime pays into the Transportation Trust Fund? About 90 bucks a year.”

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In a much 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 don’t pay into the gas tax and are currently exempt from paying the sales tax, yet they put 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 years to come,” he said, “it only makes sense to ensure that owners of expensive EVs pay their fair share.”

Besides the new electric car fee, clean car advocates are concerned the loss of an EV sales tax break over the next three years will hurt sales in New Jersey, where EV registrations recently eclipsed 150,000.

Starting in 2035, the state will require all new car sales be fully electric.

Nevertheless, a different poll, conducted by Rutgers University and released in February, found some drivers don’t want to make the jump to EVs at all and prefer to stick with vehicles with internal combustion engines.

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

Read more about the latest poll results by clicking here.

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

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Steven Rodas may be reached at srodas@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on X at @stevenrodasnj.