Should new energy vehicles pay road maintenance fees? Electric cars are heavier but tax-exempt, causing controversy. Fuel vehicle owners often joke, "Half a tank of gas is tax." This saying highlights a problem: why are electric vehicles generally heavier than fuel vehicles and cause more damage to roads, yet they don't pay road maintenance fees? As the number of new energy vehicles grows, this issue becomes increasingly important.
In 2009, the state merged road maintenance fees into the refined oil consumption tax, with road maintenance funds mainly coming from taxes in oil prices. This mechanism worked well in the fuel vehicle era: more road use, more fuel, more fees—a logical system. However, the rapid growth of new energy vehicles has disrupted this balance. Data from the China Passenger Car Association shows that by 2025, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles will exceed 50%, and the national ownership of new energy vehicles will reach 43.97 million, accounting for 12.01% of total vehicles. Electric cars do not burn oil, so they naturally avoid the road maintenance fees in oil taxes.
At the same time, the growth in fuel vehicle ownership continues to decline, and fuel tax revenue growth is slowing. Combined with rigid increases in maintenance costs, the supply-demand contradiction in road maintenance funds is becoming increasingly prominent. Research from the Highway Research Institute of the Ministry of Transport indicates that the annual funding gap for ordinary highway maintenance and management across the country is about 50%, leaving many highways in a state of "maintained but unfunded, should be repaired but no money." This gap is expected to widen as highway mileage increases. The Libo County Transportation Bureau also noted that the funding gap for disaster repair remains large.
Fuel vehicle owners' dissatisfaction stems not only from the unfairness of unequal tax burdens but also from the fact that electric vehicles are generally heavier than their fuel counterparts and cause more road wear, yet they don't pay road maintenance fees. Data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows that over the past 12 years, the average weight of passenger cars in China has risen from 1.3 tons to 1.7 tons, a net increase of nearly 400 kilograms. New energy vehicles are the main drivers of this "weight gain race." According to data from the Expert Committee of the China Automobile Dealers Association, from 2025 to 2026, the average curb weight of new energy vehicles on sale has exceeded 2 tons, with 12 models weighing 3 tons or more. The impact of increased weight on roads is obvious. Data from NIO founder Li Bin shows that for every 20% increase in vehicle weight, the road damage rate becomes 2.07 times the original.
