AASHTO Journal - Kentucky Now Collecting EV-Related Fees for Roadways

Under the terms of two state laws that took effect on the first day of 2024, owners of electric vehicles and gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles in Kentucky will now pay new ownership fees as well as a fee to use public recharging stations so they pay a “fair share” of the cost of building and maintaining the state’s transportation infrastructure.

[Above image by KYTC]

James Ballinger, state highway engineer with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, noted in a statement that passage of House Bill 360 in the 2023 Kentucky General Assembly – which established the EV recharging fee – will help ensure the “long-term stability” of the state’s Road Fund while ensuring that EV and hybrid owners pay a “fair share.”

“Sharing the roads also means sharing the cost to maintain them,” Ballinger noted. “With the rise in hybrid and EV owners in recent years, the ownership fee helps ensure their contributions to the Road Fund match those of the majority of Kentucky drivers who drive a gas or diesel-powered vehicle and pay associated taxes.”

He added that, in 2022, the General Assembly passed House Bill 8 which added a dealer tax of 3 cents per kilowatt/hour of electricity for EV charging stations on or after July 1, 2022. Similar to Kentucky’s Motor Fuels Tax, it will be added to the selling price of the charge to those who operate charging stations – with all of that tax revenue going into the Road Fund.

Concurrently, the new annual fee structure for EV and hybrid vehicle owners under Kentucky law includes the following: $120 for EVs, $60 for hybrids, and $60 for electric motorcycles.

All of those fees are directed into the state’s Road Fund, which pays for road construction, maintenance, engineering, planning and research as well as administrative functions related to Kentucky’s transportation network. The KYTC – which is responsible for collecting those new fees – noted that Kentucky now has over 9,000 registered EVs, including motorcycles, and over 60,000 hybrids.