EVs are heavier than gas cars, but are they harder on roads?

Open this photo in gallery:

Alberta will be charging EV owners $200 a year [starting in 2025, saying EVs tend to be heavier and therefore] harder on roads. Are EVs really so heavy that they’re chewing up roads? How much heavier are they? – Bruce, Lethbridge

Alberta wants EV owners to pull their own weight when it comes to paying for road maintenance – but battery-electric passenger vehicles, while considerably heavier than their gas-powered counterparts, are far from the heaviest vehicles on the road, experts said.

“For pavement, the biggest cause of damage is large transport trucks,” Kevin Heaslip, director of the University of Tennessee’s Center for Transportation Research, said in an email.

Alberta’s latest budget added a $200 annual tax for EV owners, which it said will cover extra wear and tear on the roads. The province said the fee is meant to mirror the amount of fuel tax paid annually by the typical Alberta driver.

EVs won’t cause roads to crumble faster, but our love of heavier cars is causing problems

So, how much heavier are EVs than similar gas-powered vehicles?

Last year, Heaslip told Politifact that EVs often weigh 30 per cent more than comparable gas-powered vehicles because of their batteries.

For example, a 2024 Hyundai Kona weighs 1,385 kilograms (3,053 pounds), while a 2024 Kona Electric weighs 1,705 kilograms (3,758 pounds), or about 23 per cent more.

But, with consumers flocking to trucks and SUVs, plenty of gas vehicles on the road are heavier than the Kona EV.

“If you look at Alberta’s data on light-duty vehicle sales, it has moved from approximately 65 per cent [truck and SUV] sales in 2005 to 93 per cent at the end of 2023,” said Daniel Breton, chief executive officer of Electric Mobility Canada, a Montreal-based national non-profit that promotes EV ownership. “As EV batteries get more efficient, I expect all EVs will eventually become lighter than comparable gas cars.”

But for now, they’re quite a bit chunkier than their gas-powered counterparts.

For instance, a gas-powered Ford F-150 weighs between 1,824 and 2,274 kilograms (4,021 to 5,013 pounds). The heaviest F-150 Lightning EV, by comparison, weighs 3,130 kilograms (6,900 pounds).

But even smaller cars are heavier than they used to be. For example, a 2024 Honda Civic sedan weighs nearly 227 kilograms (500 pounds) more than a 2000 Honda Civic sedan.

Transport trucks, however, are far heavier than passenger vehicles, whether electric or gas. Depending on their weight, they cause hundreds to thousands of times more damage to roads than passenger vehicles, Breton said.

“The damage due to cars, for practical purposes, when we are designing pavements, is basically zero,” Karim Chatti, a civil engineer from Michigan State University told Inside Science in 2020.

Who’s paying for roads?

Revenue from the gas tax, which now stands at nine cents a litre, isn’t specifically earmarked for roads - it goes into Alberta’s general revenue, which funds roads and other programs, Alberta’s finance ministry said in an email.

The $200 EV tax, which is set to start next year and would be added to annual vehicle registrations, is “in line with the estimated annual fuel tax paid by the driver of a typical internal combustion vehicle in Alberta,” said Savannah Johannsen, Alberta Finance spokeswoman.

“The government can and should be concerned about a reduction in general revenue as more vehicles stop using gas, and thus stop paying a gas tax,” Blake Shaffer, associate professor of economics and public policy at the University of Calgary, said in an email.

But a one-size-fits-all EV tax treats a Nissan Leaf that’s driven 5,000 kilometres a year the same as an electric Hummer that’s driven 25,000 kilometres a year, Shaffer said.

Instead of an annual flat tax just on EVs, the Alberta government should levy an annual registration fee for all vehicles – gas and electric – based on mileage and weight, Shaffer said.

“That would better target the damages vehicles impose on the roads, and be a more stable and fair structure as we move away from gas vehicles,” Shaffer said.

Breton of Electric Mobility Canada said $200 a year won’t discourage Albertans from buying EVs, but he thinks a weight- and mileage-based charge for all vehicles would be more fair.

“If we want to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from transportation, whether it’s with more people taking transit or buying electric cars or buying more fuel-efficient cars … the less gas tax we’ll get,” Breton said. “But [the $200] is not about fairness; it’s a political message. If it were about fairness, we’d have a larger discussion and we would talk about the health impacts [and costs] of gas vehicles.”

Saskatchewan introduced a $150 annual surcharge for EVs in 2021. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nunavut are the only jurisdictions that don’t currently offer or plan to offer provincial rebates for EVs on top of the $5,000 federal rebate.

“Now is not the time for an EV tax; it’s a time to be promoting adoption,” Joanna Kyriazis, director of public affairs at Clean Energy Canada, a clean energy think tank at Simon Fraser University, said in an email. “Health Canada estimates the socio-economic costs are some $120-billion, due to air-pollution-related health impacts per year, which gas-powered vehicles contribute to significantly – and EVs help to alleviate – so the costs of each vehicle type to society aren’t equal.”

Have a driving question? Send it to globedrive@globeandmail.com and put ‘Driving Concerns’ in your subject line. Emails without the correct subject line may not be answered. Canada’s a big place, so let us know where you are so we can find the answer for your city and province.