I know this claim has been made, but I’m not sure it is the “first in the world” (society seems to have been infected with a Trump-like need to hyperbolise everything as the ‘biggest’, ‘best’, ‘largest’, ‘first’, ‘worst’, ’last’ etc even when it’s not. Truth, unfortunately, has been the casualty).
19 states in the USA have EV-specific taxes: California (from Jan 2021), Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
Now, all of these are annual or bi-annual lump sum taxes rather than per-km fees, but VIC’s law is not the world’s first EV specific tax. It might be the world’s first EV-specific road-usage charge but I have not been able to fact-check that.
7 US states (Maine, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Virginia and Washington) have enacted road-usage charges but these are not EV specific.