Sadly, you get charged the extra registration fee in Georgia even if you don’t choose the Alternative Fuel Plate. It applies to all EVs regardless of plate choice.
It's not unfair, given EVs don't pay any gas taxes which are used for road infrastructure maintenance. I pay about $225 in WA state, of which IIRC ~$150 is for gas tax (apparently equivalent of gas taxes paid for 12K miles in an average car, at least couple of years ago) and ~$75 is for public DC chargers (though that one is fishy, I don't see that many public DC chargers around). While I think it's fair for EVs to pay for road maintenance, I still resent the WA government for how they got it implemented - they had people vote for $10 annual EV charge on a ballot, since they need voter approval for new taxes, then they raised it 1,000% the next year and another 50% the next (no voter approval required for raising taxes), so 1,500% increase in 2 years. WA government is a bunch of greedy thieves actually - with its latest taxes WA overtook CA for most expensive gas in the nation. They have record tax revenues while having record deficits too. A recent audit in King Country (richest county in WA) came back with scalding report how they managed to spend $1.5b on "human services" in a single year without any oversight, paying off hand written invoices, or hand modified invoices, or paying organizations that don't actually exist - the country response to auditors - "thank you for bringing this to our attention, we'll do better in the future" (as opposed to, "we'll follow the misplaced money and find out who lined their pockets with the money"). I read it as "oh shit, we need to cover our tracks better next time". As a point of reference, prior to COVID19 that same human services department had a budget of ~$20M, it grew to $1,500M after COVID once the spending was essentially unrestricted, with cash payouts to who knows whom.
Yeah, I have to pay the arbitrary $235 or whatever for the privilege of driving and EV regardless and I pay the $35 AFV plate upcharge. It's the value of the latter that I suppose is greatly lessened now.
It's not unfair in principle, but the way Georgia went about doing it was arbitrary and political. I was pretty close to the process. A single legislator suggested $200 per year "because it seemed about right to them" and "EV owners can afford it" without any actual study or fundamentals. This was done when the most common EV in Georgia was a Nissan Leaf but they end up paying essentially what a gasoline F-150 driven 40,000 miles a year would pay in fuel taxes. Then they indexed the fee to inflation or some other escalator so it's $234.97 a year now even though fuel prices are essentially flat.
I get that the states need a mechanism to pay for roadways.
Mileage based road taxes are fraught with issues. First, which roads? What if you drive out of state, how does one allocate taxes from California for someone driving across the country? Then there is privacy, people don't want their driving tracked, even on annual basis (how many miles per year in which state, or county, etc.). Any tracking is also subject to being hacked, where attackers could gain access to detailed travel history, and we know government track record of data breaches is horrible, plus you cannot sue them for losing your data due to incompetence. Then of course there is cheating, people misreport mileage, or disconnect their speedos so that their odometer stops. Then there are some simpler issues, like vehicle weight (which is proportional to road wear, currently compensated for, since heavier vehicles burn more gasoline, therefore pay more gas tax). Then there will be people to argue this is an opportunity for "progressive tax", so they might want to make it based on owner's income for example. There will be other lobbyists pushing politicians towards other goals for a new tax, to protect their donors' interest. Etc, etc.
