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Michigan Increases Taxes To Fund Road Repairs, Hybrids And Electrics Affected

Michigan’s plan to increase funding to support much-needed road repairs was signed off over a year ago, but it will come into play starting January 1, 2017.
2011-2016 Chevrolet Volt 5 photos
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2011-2016 Chevrolet Volt statistics2011-2016 Chevrolet Volt statistics2011-2016 Chevrolet Volt statistics2011-2016 Chevrolet Volt statistics
The scheme (House Bill 4736) involves higher fees for registration, along with additional taxes. It sounds reasonable so far, but things are not peachy for some hybrid car owners.

Apparently, Michigan’s legislators have discovered that electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids, and hybrids, in general, do not use as much fuel as conventional automobiles, or at all in some cases, but they still drive on public roadways.

Because of that issue, just adding taxes in the price of gas, which is already happening (gas tax increased by 7.3 cents), is not enough to support road repairs. Therefore, the bill will raise registration fees for battery-powered vehicles of all sorts, including hybrids, which have been slapped with a substantial increase.

Owners of electric vehicles will have to pay a $35 gasoline tax, along with a $100 annual surcharge on top of the usual registration fees. The plan has the goal of gathering an additional $600 million in taxes for transportation purposes.

As The Detroit Free Press notes, the law considers vehicles that have a battery capacity of over four kWh as being a hybrid, which would rule out many cars, including the first generation Chevrolet Volt from the increased fees, but the case of an owner of two Toyota Prius models has proved the contrary.

A man named Shiva Ganganithi, the owner of a 2007 Prius and a 2011 Prius, has received a notice to pay $339 in registration fees for his two hybrid cars, which he says is a $130 increase over the previous renewals.

The hike is described as “astronomical” by Ganganithi, and he hopes that the quality of the roads in Michigan will be increased after the additional funding.

It is worth noting that owners can pay their registration renewal fees ahead of January 1, 2017, which allows those people to benefit from the ongoing rates. That possibility applies to those that have to renew their registrations within the next six month, so hurry up if you are among them and want to pay less.
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About the author: Sebastian Toma
Sebastian Toma profile photo

Sebastian's love for cars began at a young age. Little did he know that a career would emerge from this passion (and that it would not, sadly, involve being a professional racecar driver). In over fourteen years, he got behind the wheel of several hundred vehicles and in the offices of the most important car publications in his homeland.
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