Washington Rep. Jake Fey (D) talked Tuesday about his bill to create a road usage fee for electric and hybrid vehicles.

Talking was his main goal — with fellow legislators, interest groups and other stakeholders.

Fey’s House Bill 1832 was more of a conversation starter than a nailed-down piece of legislation. 

“I’m not wedded to any specific detail. This is the start of a discussion,” he said at a hearing on the bill before the House Transportation Committee, which he chairs. “We can’t sit back and pray we’ll have a solution.”

Last year, Gov. Jay Inslee issued a mandate banning the sale of new gasoline-powered cars in the state by 2035, which led to Fey’s proposal of a road usage fee. The measure is designed to replace shrinking state gasoline tax revenue that pays to maintain Washington’s highways. (See Road to Mass EV Adoption Still Unclear in Wash.)

“Gasoline revenues are headed downward and consistently so from year to year,” Fey said. The legislature needs to discuss and hammer out a road usage fee system to counteract those shrinking gas revenues, he said.

HB 1832 proposes to establish a voluntary road usage charge program in 2025 that would levy a 2.5-cent fee for every mile that an electric or hybrid vehicle drives on public roads and highways. The fee would likely be calculated by an instrument connected to an electric vehicle’s odometer, a Transportation Committee memo said. A mandatory mileage fee would be targeted for 2030 under the bill.

Owners of electric and hybrid vehicles in Washington currently pay two annual fees that total $150. Under HB 1832, an owner would have the choice of either paying the $150 or the fees calculated by the odometer readings, which would be capped at the amount of the combined annual fees.

Before Fey suspended the hearing Tuesday, the Washington State Transportation Commission, Seattle Electric Vehicle Association (SEVA) and Seattle-based think tank Climate Solutions testified in favor of the bill, without getting into specifics.

“This is a more equitable system for EVs to pay their fair share of road costs,” SEVA’s Grace Reamer said.

Fey said he plans to reopen the hearing on HB 1832, but no date was set.