When lawmakers held an emergency legislative session last fall to find revenue to pay for Oregon’s road maintenance, they did so in part by passing new taxes and fees for electric vehicle owners, but left out commercial fleets and medium-duty vehicles owned by companies like Amazon.
Lawmakers said they did not include those vehicles because they needed more time to work out the best way to make sure delivery vehicles, such as Amazon’s more than 11,000 electric vans mostly manufactured by automaker Rivian, contribute to road costs. The vehicles are too light to qualify for a weight-mile fee that currently applies to heavy-duty trucks, and because they don’t run on gas, they are not subject to the state’s 40-cent-per-gallon gas tax.
Beginning next July when the new EV fees and taxes kick in, an Oregonian driving a roughly 3,000-pound Kia Niro electric passenger vehicle could contribute about the same amount annually to the State Highway Fund as Amazon does for each of its 10,000-pound Rivian delivery vans.
These key points were written by a Capital Chronicle reporter.
Oregonians driving electric vehicles will be required to pay hundreds of dollars in new taxes and fees starting next year, sending tens of millions of dollars annually to the State Highway Fund.
The fund is today mostly seeded with money from the state’s 40-cent-per-gallon gas tax and pays for Oregon roads and infrastructure. That revenue has slowed as more Oregonians in recent years buy less gas and pay less gas tax, opting instead to drive more electric, hybrid and fuel-efficient cars, while costs for road maintenance go up.
Exempt from the new rules, however, is the largest corporate fleet of medium-duty electric vehicles in the state, owned by Amazon and its affiliates. About 1,000 medium-duty electric vehicles and about 33,000 medium-duty vehicles of all fuel types are currently registered in Oregon, according to the state’s Driver and Motor Vehicle Services Division and the Commerce and Compliance Division. Amazon owns about 64% of those vehicles, and just over half — about 11,200 — are electric. That’s roughly 10% of the nearly 99,000 fully electric vehicles on Oregon roads today, according to the state’s Electric Vehicle Dashboard.
When the Oregon Legislature in September 2025 passed the new EV road use fees in an emergency session meant to get revenue to the state’s ailing Transportation Department, they omitted medium-duty electric vehicles and corporate fleets.
Alisa Carroll, an Amazon spokesperson, said over the phone that the company “didn’t have anything to do with that legislation” and “we didn’t have anything to do with whether we fit into that requirement or not,” and added via email that, “Amazon wants to help lead EV adoption.”
State Rep. Susan McLain, D-Forest Grove and co-chair of the Legislature’s Joint Transportation Committee, said there was a lot of discussion about a delivery vehicle fee during the 2025 sessions but that lawmakers needed more time to iron out nuance.
“We didn’t feel like we had it nailed down to what it should be,” she said. “It was a special session, there were final amendments to be included and it was a timing thing, and we wanted to be sure we get it right.”
She said lawmakers will discuss the issue in the 2027 session as they work out more long-term fixes to the state’s transportation budget.
House Speaker Julie Fahey, D-Eugene, who led on cross-party negotiations over the transportation bill, said in an email she “supported concepts” to make companies like Amazon pay their fair share for use of Oregon’s roads during the 2025 legislative session, and that she will work with her colleagues in the next session to “enact a solution.”
“As Oregonians are struggling with inflation and skyrocketing gas prices, it’s only reasonable to expect companies with a high volume of deliveries to pay their fair share to maintain the Oregon roads and bridges that they profit from,” she wrote.
State Rep. Darcey Edwards, R-Banks, raised concerns on the House floor during debate on the bill in September. She criticized Democratic lawmakers for their willingness to pass a 6-cent-per-gallon gas tax increase and payroll tax increases, both of which Oregon voters later blocked in a ballot referendum, while allowing a multi-billion-dollar corporation a pass.
“Here’s the part that makes my blood boil,” she said, “While regular Oregonians are being told to pay their fair share, this bill gives a free pass to some of the heaviest vehicles on our roads: Amazon, FedEx, UPS. The bill carves out EV delivery trucks from the road usage charge. These are 9,000- to 14,000-pound commercial vehicles that tear up our infrastructure every single day, and they’re being exempted. Meanwhile, families in Rainier and working moms in Vernonia are asked to cough up more at the pump and the DMV. How is this fair?”
Oregonians pay more
The new fees on Oregon EV drivers are expected to generate about $67 million in new revenue during the 2027-29 budget cycle. By 2031, more than 580,000 electric and hybrid vehicles are expected to generate about $103.5 million annually for the State Highway Fund, according to Anna Howe, a spokesperson for the state transportation department.
Under the new rules, existing EV drivers must pay either a per-mile road user tax currently set at about 2 cents a mile, or an annual fee of $340 paid at the time of registration every two years, for a $680 biennial charge. The per-mile fee, tracked and paid monthly using NextPass or GeoToll, benefits drivers who don’t rack up much mileage, while the annual fee benefits EV and high-mileage car owners who spend a lot of time on the road.
By January 2028, the rules will apply to owners of newly purchased electric passenger vehicles, and by July 2028, they will apply to owners of hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles. Those who drive hybrids, meaning they also buy gas, and who opt to pay the new per-mile EV tax, will have a portion of their 40-cent-per-gallon fuel tax subtracted from their monthly road use charge fees, Howe from the transportation department explained.
If Amazon’s fleet of more than 11,000 electric medium-duty delivery vans were charged the same flat fee next year that everyday Oregonians who drive electric vehicles will be charged if they choose the fee over the per-mile tax, the company would pay at a minimum an additional $3.7 million per year, and nearly $7.5 million more per two-year budget cycle. That does not include the many delivery and logistics companies that use their fleets to deliver packages on behalf of Amazon.
An Amazon delivery van manufactured by automaker Rivian has a base weight of about 10,000 pounds, and can carry more than 2,700 pounds in cargo, so it does not meet the 26,000-pound threshold for paying a weight-mile tax that heavy-duty trucks pay, which range from 7 cents per mile to nearly 24 cents per mile depending on weight. And because the vans are fully electric, the company doesn’t pay the 40-cent-per-gallon gas tax.
This means most of what Amazon contributes to the State Highway Fund is the annual per vehicle registration cost of $464 for a 10,000-pound vehicle, which is reduced for many of their vehicles that are registered between states and that aren’t driven exclusively in Oregon.
Annual registration for an Oregonian today driving a passenger EV such as a Kia Niro is about $188. By the time the new flat fee and mileage tax is required next year, that driver will see their registration costs decline to $85 per year, or $170 every two years. That still means that if they opt into the flat fee, they’ll be expected to pay about $425 per year total into the State Highway Fund, roughly the same Amazon currently pays.
There are today about 1,100 Oregon drivers already doing this voluntarily via the OReGO program, which has yet to generate net revenue for the transportation department. Amazon is not among the participants.
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