Proposed state law would require emissions-free autonomous vehicles, and tax them by the mile – The Boston Globe (Jan 20, 2017)
As regulators and governments seek to provide a legal framework for autonomous driving, we’ll see something of a dichotomy between those who try to be as welcoming as possible to experiments and development of the technology, and those who see this as yet another opportunity to drive tax revenue or other separate goals. These lawmakers in Massachusetts seem to be taking the second approach, proposing that autonomous cars pay a per-mile road tax and produce zero emissions. Contrast this with Arizona’s governor, who has been very open to testing of autonomous vehicles and famously invited Uber’s self-driving cars to his state when they were banned from San Francisco. San Francisco, of course, is somewhere in the middle, largely open to testing of the technology, but with reasonable limits. Just as there will be fierce competition between tech companies around autonomous driving, there will be competition between states and cities around the technology too. Policies such as those being advocated in Massachusetts are likely to do little to endear the state to would-be autonomous driving companies.
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