The nation's largest auto industry trade group wants Congress to kill the federal gasoline tax and replace it with a flat fee on every vehicle, pegged to weight, a move that would reshape how Americans pay for roads just as the Highway Trust Fund slides toward insolvency.
Alliance for Automotive Innovation CEO John Bozzella put the proposal forward as the federal government's current surface transportation law races toward a September 30 expiration, Fox Business reported, citing Reuters as the first outlet to break the news. The Alliance represents General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, and other leading manufacturers.
The pitch is simple: scrap the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal gas tax that hasn't been raised since 1993 and charge every registered vehicle a fee based on its weight. Bozzella framed the change as a fairness fix and an infrastructure lifeline rolled into one.
"This policy would guarantee every vehicle on the road contributes something to maintaining America's transportation network."
He added a pointed critique of the status quo.
"Those driving older, less fuel-efficient vehicles or who travel long distances bear the financial burden. That's not fair."
The Highway Trust Fund finances federal highway and mass-transit programs. In real terms, revenue from the gas tax has fallen roughly 60 percent since Congress last touched the rate more than three decades ago. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects the fund will hit insolvency by 2028 and face a 46-percent spending cut if nothing changes.
Washington's workaround has been to quietly raid the general fund. Since 2008, Congress and successive administrations have shifted more than $275 billion from general revenues into the trust fund to keep road repairs going. That is money borrowed or diverted from other priorities, and ultimately from taxpayers who may never realize how the shell game works.
The numbers tell a clear story. A tax frozen at 1993 levels cannot keep pace with modern infrastructure costs, and an auto industry already bracing for an uncertain 2026 outlook faces the added risk of a crumbling road network that drives up vehicle maintenance costs for ordinary Americans.
Bozzella's weight-based fee would function like a registration charge assessed on all vehicles. The Alliance has not publicly disclosed specific dollar amounts, and the proposal's formal details remain unclear. But the concept carries real consequences for pickup-truck owners, SUV drivers, and anyone whose vehicle tips the scale, which is to say, most of middle America.
The current gas tax at least ties payment to usage: drive more, burn more fuel, pay more. A flat weight fee severs that link. A retired couple who drives 5,000 miles a year in a full-size truck would pay the same as a traveling salesman logging 30,000 miles in the same model.
That tradeoff matters. Gas-powered pickup trucks remain in high demand, and the Americans buying them tend to live in rural and suburban areas where driving long distances is not a luxury, it is a necessity.
One issue the Alliance's proposal does address is the growing number of electric vehicles that pay zero gas tax while still wearing down the same roads. House Republicans tried to tackle that gap last year with a proposed $250 annual fee on EVs and a $100 fee on hybrids. The provision never made it into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The Electrification Coalition pushed back at the time, arguing the $250 EV fee was unfair because an average gas-powered vehicle pays just $88 a year in federal gas taxes. That comparison cuts both ways: if $88 is the benchmark, then EV owners have been paying nothing at all while gas-car drivers subsidize the roads they share.
The automaker lobby's weight-fee idea would, in theory, close that gap by making every vehicle contribute. But shifting the entire burden to a weight-based model also means the industry's own customers, buyers of heavy trucks and SUVs that generate the fattest profit margins, would bear a disproportionate share. It is worth asking whose interests the Alliance is really balancing.
Washington is not the only government eyeing a post-gas-tax future. Several Democrat-run states have begun experimenting with mileage-based fees and driver-monitoring programs that go well beyond anything Bozzella proposed. Massachusetts lawmakers are considering the Freedom to Move Act, which would track emissions and vehicle miles traveled while developing statewide mileage-reduction goals. A separate Massachusetts proposal would require EV drivers to pay an annual tax based on miles driven, checked through odometer readings during inspections, the Washington Times reported.
Minnesota's Department of Transportation said it is "experimenting with technology that could be used to implement a mileage-based user fee to reduce car traffic and raise revenue 'to close the highway funding gap and ensure everyone is paying their fair share.'" California is weighing a bill described as "a potential replacement" for the gas tax that would tax all drivers by miles driven.
The pattern is hard to miss. Blue-state governments are not just looking for revenue, they are tying transportation policy to climate goals and building surveillance infrastructure to enforce it. A federal weight fee may sound simpler, but the direction of travel at the state level should concern anyone who values privacy and limited government.
Meanwhile, Toyota is committing $1 billion to expand factories in Kentucky and Indiana, a sign that major manufacturers still see a future in American production, provided Washington does not saddle their customers with an unpredictable new tax regime.
Any new vehicle fee will face the same headwind that has kept the gas tax frozen for over thirty years: voters hate paying more to drive. The Washington Examiner noted that Maryland and Virginia have not raised their state gasoline taxes since 1992 and 1986, respectively. In Maryland, public backlash forced officials to scale back a proposed Chesapeake Bay Bridge toll hike, first from $5, then from $8, down to smaller increases of $4 and $6.
Bob Chase, president of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, captured the dynamic: "There's always something else besides putting in the money we need." He pointed out that Virginia's 17.5-cent gas tax has a real purchasing power of just 7 cents today, thanks to inflation.
That erosion is the core problem. Inflation has hollowed out existing gas taxes nationwide, and automakers are already reshuffling their own strategies in response to shifting consumer demand. Congress has responded not by fixing the funding mechanism but by raiding general revenues, a move that hides the true cost of road maintenance from the public and piles it onto the national debt.
Bozzella is right that the current system is broken. A 1993-era tax rate cannot fund 2025-era infrastructure. The $275 billion general-fund bailout since 2008 proves the point. And EV owners skating by without paying a dime in gas taxes is a legitimate inequity.
But a weight-based fee designed by the auto industry's own lobby deserves scrutiny, not applause. The Alliance represents manufacturers who profit from selling the heaviest vehicles on the road. A fee structure that replaces per-gallon taxation with a flat charge could shift costs in ways that benefit high-volume sellers at the expense of low-mileage rural drivers.
Congress has until September 30 to reauthorize surface transportation funding. The open questions are significant: What specific fee amounts would apply? Would the fee vary by vehicle class? Who administers it? And would it generate enough revenue to actually close the trust fund gap, or would lawmakers simply find a new excuse to raid the general fund again?
With geopolitical risks already threatening auto supply lines and fuel prices, the last thing American drivers need is a hastily designed tax overhaul that trades one set of problems for another.
Fixing the Highway Trust Fund is long overdue. But the fix should come from lawmakers accountable to voters, not from an industry lobby shopping for the fee structure most convenient for its own bottom line.