I live in AZ, but I happened on this thread - two sons in WA (one with a Tesla) and it's not impossible I'll end up there at least as a full- or part-time resident.
Some semi-random thoughts while reading the discussion:
To the idea of a tire-related tax: Teslas famously tend to rapid tire wear because of their high available drive-wheel torque. Think twice if you believe it's neutral or advantageous for Tesla owners.
To the idea of road-wear contribution from your own usage: I think that the need for road maintenance is not primarily from cars driving miles; it's more from weather damage. Water in coastal WA, moisture + hard freezes inland, large daily temperature excursions in AZ. If you're homebound during Covid or its aftermath, you're presumably getting more deliveries. If you live in the city and you walk, ride, bike or scoot around, you are being supported by a huge goods and services network over the roads (a point surprisingly unrecognized by dedicated urbanites). All this argues that
everyone needs the roads and it's not so much tied to personal miles traveled on them. It really says that the taxes for roads should not be from gas usage or motor vehicle registration in the first place, but perhaps from sales (general consumption of goods and services) or property (looser correlation to roads but more progressive*), or income (poor correlation to roads but yet more progressive*). A simple equal head tax is probably fair regarding roads and other things, but historically unpopular.
*progressive in the mathematical tax-rate sense, not the Progressive political-philosophy sense, though there's a lot of overlap in practice.
Of course if you believe strongly in EV incentivization and ICE punishment (and more generally in tax policy as a lever to force change rather than just to pay for costs of required public expenditures), you'll like a gas tax and dislike an equally-applied car-registration fee. This is arguably a
politically-Progressive view with a debatable environmental-impact basis, though also arguably elitist as a benefit to a wealthier demographic and thus economically regressive (a quite-common pattern today).
To the topic of tracking, monitoring & reporting: I know we're being tracked both personally and meta-datically already, but I'd hate to see any new precedent of government reporting sourced from our cars or homes or persons. If a mileage-based tax is adopted despite the points discussed above, then I like the self-reporting of annual odometer readings the best. Simple, least intrusive, maintains the important feeling of voluntary compliance with little real risk of successful cheating. If a type-it-in method isn't good enough, then I could envision an option in the Tesla app/website that, under owner control, creates a VIN-associated report, QR code or whatever, for upload or mailing to tax and/or DMV authorities each year. About the same as other reporting requirements and associated software. This could also include any system-health diagnostics to satisfy states that still want safety inspections. The emissions-testing and safety-inspection stations should largely wither and eventually disappear, with only a small backup to handle compliance issues flagged by law enforcement
To the people who simply grouse about government idiots and taxes, I'm with you in spirit but that's beyond the scope of an EV forum. If EVs and Tesla grow at a screaming rate, then gas-tax revenue will disappear and something has to give. Even a mythical perfect, waste-free government needs to have funds for the road system.
