Electric vehicle (EV) owners could be asked to pay fuel surcharge as early as 2030, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) said yesterday.
The issue was discussed in a meeting at the Legislative Yuan’s Transportation Committee, which was scheduled to review the budget plans proposed by the Railway Bureau, Institute of Transportation and Taiwan Transportation Safety Board.
Owners of electric vehicles are not obligated to pay a fuel surcharge for now, as the government is aiming to gradually phase out the use of gasoline-powered vehicles to curb carbon emissions, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said.
Photo: Huang Shu-li, Taipei Times
However, since fuel surcharges are levied every quarter from all motorists who access roads built by the government, electric vehicle users should be no exception, he said.
As electric vehicles are not powered by gasoline, the name of the surcharge should be changed to “highway maintenance, construction and safety management fee,” he said.
A separate pricing scheme should be established on how electric vehicle users should be charged, he said.
The nation has about 90,000 electric cars and 700,000 electric scooters, Department of Public Transportation and Supervision Director-General Lin Fu-shan (林福山) said.
“They would be asked to pay the fuel surcharge, just like other car owners when there are 500,000 electric cars and 2.4 million electric scooters in the country,” Lin Fu-shan said.
“Judging from the rate at which they grow, the target number could be reached as early as 2030,” he added.
The amount of fuel surcharge that electric vehicle owners should pay would be calculated by converting the vehicle’s horsepower to engine displacement of gasoline-powered vehicles, Lin Fu-shan said.
The largest engine displacement volume of a gasoline-powered vehicle is 8 liters, and the fuel surcharge would be set at NT$15,720, (US$483.92) he said.
The maximum fuel surcharge that electric car users would pay would be the same as that paid by drivers of 8-liter vehicles, Lin Fu-shan said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS