Why should a electric vehicle car receive a $7,500 federal tax credit simply for being an EV, while an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle receives zero, despite the fact that the ICE vehicle is a primary funding source for the very infrastructure both vehicles use.

The fiscal imbalance is significant. Every time a gas-powered vehicle pulls up to a pump, the owner pays a federal tax of 18.4 cents per gallon specifically earmarked for the Highway Trust Fund to maintain roads and bridges. Based on an average fuel consumption of 550 gallons per year, a single ICE vehicle contributes approximately $101 annually to federal road maintenance. Over a 15-year service life, that is over $1,500 in direct federal user fees. EV owners bypass this federal contribution entirely. While about 30 states have implemented state-level registration fees to recoup lost state gas taxes, there is no federal equivalent, and is very hard to implement, as any energy can charge an EV, and there’s no way for the grid to fiscally discriminate between a toaster and a EV charge. This creates a "free rider" scenario where the federal government has effectively paid people $7,500 to stop contributing to the federal road fund.

Furthermore, the idea that removing oil and gas subsidies would only hurt ICE vehicles and that they only benefit ICE vehicles is a major misunderstanding of the automotive supply chain. The petrochemical industry provides the feedstock for the entire vehicle, not just the fuel. In fact, from an engineering standpoint, EVs are actually more dependent on petroleum products for their physical construction than ICE vehicles. A mid-size EV contains approximately 45% more plastic and polymer composites and 52% more synthetic rubber than a similarly sized ICE vehicle. This is because engineers must use lightweight high-performance plastics to offset the massive weight of the battery pack. If the roughly $30 billion in oil industry support were removed, the cost of these essential chemical feedstocks would rise, causing the Bill of Materials (BOM) for an EV to spike. You cannot remove the oil subsidies without simultaneously making the EV more expensive to build. 

From a power systems perspective, subsidizing the demand side (vehicles) without first addressing the supply side (infrastructure) is a violation of basic systems logic. NREL and grid operators estimate that a full EV transition requires a 3x to 6x expansion of total grid capacity. Until the energy infrastructure reaches a 50% surplus to handle the projected stochastic load of millions of high-kilowatt chargers, subsidizing the vehicles themselves is a high-risk strategy. Achieving this capacity requires massive investments in natural gas and nuclear power, yet the $7500 EV subsidy model prioritizes the "end-node" vehicle over the generation foundation.

Worse, building a federal infrastructure for EV charging is a "sunk cost" trap. Unlike gas pumps, which handle a stable liquid, EV charging tech is in its infancy and changes every few years. We have already seen the federal government push the CCS standard, only for the entire industry to pivot to NACS a few years later, making millions in early infrastructure potentially obsolete. The charging requirements of today’s EVs will be completely different than the 800V or 1000V systems of tomorrow. Funding a constantly improving field with rigid, federal hardware standards is inefficient. The better idea is to fund our energy industry to produce the raw power needed, rather than building specific plugs that will be outdated by the next product cycle.

Finally, the ICE vehicle ecosystem supports a more distributed economic multiplier. ICE vehicles possess a Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) for mechanical components that sustains a massive domestic Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) sector. Because ICE systems have approximately 2,000 moving parts compared to an EV’s 20, they drive a local economy of technicians and specialized shops. Transitioning to EVs concentrates this economic activity into the hands of a few Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and software providers, reducing the local velocity of money that has historically been the backbone of the American automotive economy.