This is kinda true, but places blame in the wrong place.<p>The TL;DR is that the stress caused by EV's being heavier is miniscule in practice on any road with any meaningful truck traffic.<p>Whoever is heaviest should be paying most of the cost of creation and maintenance. Sometimes this would be "any EV" + ICE trucks. For most of the roads being talked about, it would be larger trucking companies.<p>Why?<p>Roads are weird - the stress caused by axle load is a fourth power law.<p>So one 5 axle truck causes as much stress as 10643 cars.<p>Don't confuse stress with damage, because as the trucking associations (correctly) point out , properly designed and maintained roads aren't damaged by loads they are meant to handle - environmental factors matter as much to deterioration as anything else.<p>But <i>building, maintaining, and updating</i> the roads so they can handle the load and not be damaged <i>does</i> cost much more for these roads than other ones.<p>This is because roads with a single 5 axle truck <i>has to be built</i> to handle as much load as 10000 cars in order to not be damaged. It also has to be maintained in that state. So it's a bit of a red herring to say the trucks don't cause damage - this is true on roads designed for them (and not true on roads not designed for them) - but doesn't change the fact that they are causing most of the cost to build and maintain roads that can support large trucks.<p>In the end, because of 4th power law here, the cost should be apportioned to who you have to design and maintain for. Nobody should be freeloading, whether it's ICE trucks, EV's, or larger trucks.<p>Anything else is just one group externalizing costs onto another. For examples, in states that just use "mileage driven" and charge everyone the same, most drivers are subsidizing truckers and larger vehicles, and because of the 4th power law, often to an insane degree.<p>Maybe that makes sense, but i've not seen good arguments as to why.