There is a weight fee (same weight class as the ancient Tundra) and a fuel efficiency fee on our Model X registration fees here in WA.
AFAIK I know, there isn’t the same in CA. I was shocked at the annual registration fee for our Model Y vs. our PHEV.
Ours is called an “alternative fuel fee”. It’s over $200/ year for personal vehicles
For those of you (like me) who don’t know how regenerative braking works and how it can best be optimized to help charge the battery (EV and PHEVs/hybrids, I guess), this might be helpful:
CA already charges an additional $175 registration fee for EVs (bcos they don’t pay gas taxes). Other states have added a higher reg fee as well. Of course, it can only go up as state gas taxes decline.
heads up on using Regen for a driving test. I have read on Tesla blogs where CA kids are getting a fail for not using the brake pedal during their driving test.
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Long range batteries are heavy…
Too funny! DD took her CA driving test a few months ago, and that was exactly the debate we had: should she use the PHEV or the Tesla?
I advocated strenuously for the PHEV, and she went with it. And passed.
But, yes, it was the concerns about braking etc that caused me to be so adamant. I think you can change the settings etc, but a new driver, taking a road test, has way too much on their mind to be worrying about stuff like this.
The good thing is she’s now comfortable driving both, but she has the license.
Massachusetts is weird. You have to use a car with a hand break between the driver & the passenger seat. I didn’t even know they made cars like that anymore! So most people here do their drivers test through a driving school, which have the cars specially made with the handbrake and the extra brake on the passenger side.
We have an ICE also, so he’ll get practice driving both. We just start out with the EV because it feels a little safer. It has better acceleration and it does stop quicker when needed.
And IIRC someone also said their stste had an issue with Tesla’s parking brake being a longer push on the stalk (no manual lever to pull up). ** ETA the post above just mentioned this!!
Our state not only charges extra for having an EV, they also charge additionally if you want an EV tag. That does allow you in the HOV lane, so there’s that.
At least pre-pandemic, that was ESSENTIAL in the Bay Area. It’s the main reason I originally got a PHEV in the first place.
And on days like today, when I have to pick up DD and take her to her after-school EC, getting on I-80 in the East Bay can be an unholy mess. Having the right to use the HOV lane (HOV on this part of I-80 requires three or more vehicle occupants, and we usually only have two) allows us to get to her activities on time with the short interval that she has from school to EC.
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That was a common location for the parking brake before electronically activated ones. Some cars with electronically operated parking brakes have push-pull buttons on the center console, but not all do.
Of course, there were also old cars with left foot operated parking brakes (sometimes with front bench seats). Seems that those were very common decades ago.
We are just leaving SF. Would have thought, given the weather these past few months, they would have figured out how to drive in the rain! Traffic was a mess on the rainy days (which was most of the days we were here!)
For some reason, drivers forget how to drive in the rain here in the Bay Area. 
Lol. Understandable until the recent months of rain, rain,rain.
As well as in sunshine and cloudy days…
Many of the freeways/interstate roads in the Bay Area are far too small in terms of the number of lanes. I’ve been in many southern cities where there are 8 lanes on an interstate many miles from the city/center or downtown. Not so here. Plus you have multiple interstates where cars have to veer to the extreme left or right, as the case may be, to get to the right interstate.
I’ve found the HOV sticker to be invaluable here, and I thank my PHEV for cutting commute times down, often significantly.
Please move on from the discussion about rain, or feel free to start a new thread.
Been that way for a long time in NC, too. I think it has been that way the entire time we have driven EVs (8 yrs), but maybe not the first year or two.
Also highly location dependent. We have friends who have a Bolt in upstate NY. They got theirs a few years after we got ours. We live in NC and have never had to have work done on our brakes in the 6 years since we’ve had our Bolt (dang, just added that up, we bought it new in Dec 2017 I believe), but they have had to on theirs because there is so much more salt on the road in their winters and that contributes to corrosion.
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I hope this is considered on topic, but in CA the sticker that ev owners can get for the HOV lane access only seems to apply to cars only a few years old. Once the car, even an ev, can s only a few years old, or no longer qualifies. @mynameiswhatever and @sushiritto - how young must a car be to qualify? Guess that keeps the HOV lanes from getting too crowded