Our current vehicle tax system is too simplistic. In order to provide incentives for public goods, it needs to encourage:

• lower vehicle weight (less road damage, less fatal crashes),
• lower tailpipe emissions per mile (lower public health costs, better air quality, and of course long term environmental benefits)
• lower amounts of tire/brake particulates (lower local water/ground/air pollution)
• smaller physical footprint per actual occupancy (lowers infrastructure cost, improves visibility of other road users)
• quieter tire/engine noise (better for people who live/work nearby, and people who are biking/walking)
• I’m probably forgetting more things

Gas tax really only addresses one of these, and arguably not enough compared to the damage done by local combustion.

And title/registration fees don’t really scale well with the added road damage (scales with the fourth power of the axle weight)

I’m not going to even get into the perverse tax and emissions incentives which made SUVs/pickup trucks proliferate, legally called “non passenger automobiles” because the way regulators saw it, the only people who would use them would be farmers and light hauling businesses. The production push towards them has created an arms race which obliterated a decade of safety gains.

EVs in the outer suburbs are a net good on the emissions location front, especially with NJ’s energy mix, but still should be responsible for those other things.