DEAR EDITOR:

“Voltage Valley?” Currently, EV registration fees are the resistance.

In 2020, Ohio started charging a disproportional and frankly unfair additional licensing fee for hybrid and electric vehicles of $100 and $200, respectively. For our two Chevy Volts, I’ll pay an extra $400 per year because of this fee. Since the Volt is a PHEV and also uses gas as well as electric, we are actually being triple-taxed for the gas, for the electric and the extra license fee. For the amount we drove in 2020, that equates to paying more than a 20 mpg car would pay in gas taxes and even that 20 mpg is well below the national average of 24.9 mpg. Many conventional cars exceed that figure and owners pay even less in gas tax for the given miles driven.

The Ohio gasoline tax was never increased over the years proportional to the improvements in vehicle mpg. Why, all of a sudden, tack on a huge fee for cars that burn little or no gas and currently make up only 0.22 percent of all cars on the road in Ohio?

If the Mahoning Valley is poised to become “Voltage Valley” with Lordstown Motors and the LG Chem / GM Ultium battery plant, then Ohio and our lawmakers need to leverage the power we entrusted in them by normalizing these fees to promote — not penalize — current and potential EV owners.

DAVE KRAWCHYK

Leetonia