[rmay635703]

My volt keeps track of every kwhr it uses and reports it back to big brother, leaf does the same.

Given the law won't affect current EVs (only 2020 or later)

A simple KWHR meter could be required on the car and the "energy tax" could be pegged to usuage just as it is with a gas car.

Miles traveled, flat fees and their ilk aren't fair taxation on 100mpge vehicles.

Road damage goes up exponentially with weight and speed, this means an eco driver does much less damage than a typical driver. Also road damage being an exponent means that anything under 10,000 lbs does statistically insignificant amounts of damage to the road.
Primary road tax should always fall on commercial vehicles and trucks.

Further even in Cali, there are only 87,000 BEVs in state out of 270,000 ish cumulative plug ins + hydrogen cars sold there to date. That is about 1 true EV for every 367 vehicles (there are 31 million vehicles in Cali )
(A bev doesn't have an ice)
Cali BEVs travel far fewer miles than the national average, Cali Chevy volts travel more electric miles than the BEVs in that state (as of 2015)

Please note the cumulative ev number 270,000ish sometimes used (like in a wiki) for Cali is misleading, wrecked cars stay in "that" number and plug in hybrids are also in "that" number, over half of "used" EVs leave California at some point via auction which also is neglected in "that" number.

Put another way, if these EVs were equivalent gas cars California would collect an additional $1.9-4.2 million dollars in gas tax in addition to the roughly 19 billion they currently collect or about .01 percent more consumer gas tax, enough to pave 1 or 2 miles of 2 lane highway.
Their current collection scheme nets them 8.5 million a year, roughly 2-4x more than an equivalent fleet of gas economy cars would pay (last year) given current mileage metrics.

(yes I'm just looking at the primary form of gas tax in Cali as of last year, move numbers up proportionally if you don't like it)

Based on the average hidden municipal "tax" baked into Calis per KWHR rate moving these cars electric consumption to gas would loose Cali municipalities about $4.9 million a year in electric tax (this is not including the fixed taxes, only the average incremental per kwhr municipal tax most areas like California levie hidden in your per kwhr rate)

My point is electric cars already pay lots of tax, just not as of yet road tax, there are so few even in the most EV centric state that the amount of tax collected is irrelevant, the rate of taxation based off a 12,000 mile 25mpg car isn't necessarily fair either and states that charge high EV taxes tend to be net exporters of used electric cars (like all the used leafs from Georgia for sale all over the country)

Put from another point of view, I use a max of about $93 of electricity a year to run my volt, who here would want to see gas prices doubled by a taxation mechanism while other forms of energy are taxed at a lower rate?

Perhaps to early for legislators to be having this discussion and perhaps what they feel is fair will have unintended consequence.