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Electric cars aren’t commonly seen on the state’s heavily trafficked freeways.

Nor are they commonly seen on busy downtown streets in environmentally conscious Portland.

Not yet, anyway.

But as gas prices rise and plug-in electric and electric hybrid cars become more affordable, many people believe they will become more commonplace.

And while most stakeholders agree that such vehicles are better for the environment and reduce demand for imported oil, that doesn’t mean that their drivers should get a free ride when it comes to paying for road maintenance, said state Rep. Terry Beyer, D-Springfield.

Beyer plans to introduce a bill, , later in the present legislative session that would remedy that situation. It would institute a vehicle road-use charge – basically a mileage tax – for electric cars and electric hybrids, starting in January 2014.

“Our transportation modes are changing, and we’re going to have to change our funding system for roads and highways to continue to keep them up,” Beyer said. “Obviously the mass of those vehicles isn’t very high right now, but I think we need to get something in place for when that mass does get high.”

Many people started buying the cars only in the past year or so, but by 2014 the Oregon Department of Transportation expects a lot more of them to be on roads, said James Whitty, manager of the Office of Innovative Partnerships and Alternative Funding.

“By 2014 they’ll be in the thousands, and we expect that number to double every year after that for a while,” Whitty said. “That’s what happened with earlier types of hybrid cars, like the Prius, when they launched.”

The bill would charge drivers of electric cars a 0.6-cent fee per mile for road use, a number based on a gasoline-powered car getting 50 miles per gallon, Beyer said.

Hybrid drivers would be eligible for refunds for any gas taxes they paid, she added.

The bill would direct ODOT to study the best ways to use technology to track and report mileage – and from past studies by the department in 2002 and 2003, the public has made it clear that they don’t want the state government to track them by GPS, Whitty said.

“Our conception is about creating an open-system architecture, so there’s not just one way to report mileage,” Whitty said. “Owners will be able to select and choose from several options. GPS will be an option, but it won’t be mandatory. We also hope we’ll get some private-sector involvement with technology and perhaps payment options.”

One of the problems with tracking miles by odometer is that drivers who travel across state borders – say from Portland to Vancouver, Wash. – would pay state fees for driving when they’re not in the state, he added.

GPS systems can account for that, but drivers don’t like them because of privacy issues. So the department would try to come up with other reporting methods for people who travel across state lines regularly, he said.

Studying the infrastructure and developing a system would probably cost somewhere between $2 million and $3 million, Whitty added.

“It’s technology, so it’s not always cheap, unfortunately,” Whitty said.

The bill has decent bipartisan support, said Beyer, who added that she is “somewhat optimistic” that it will pass.

John Christian, chairman of the Oregon Electric Vehicle Association, said his group isn’t particularly opposed to paying a tax. But members would like to see a higher rate of penetration on roadways before any taxes are implemented.

“We have a mixed feeling in our constituency,” Christian said. “Most people feel that while we need to pay our fair share of road use, we also feel it’s important to strongly encourage Oregonians to switch over to electric vehicles.”

The association would like to see electric cars make up somewhere between 10 percent and 20 percent of the cars on the road before a tax is implemented, he said.

“The bottom line is we want to make sure this doesn’t discourage people from buying electric vehicles,” Christian said.

Beyer said the bill would grandfather in all models purchased before 2014 so that their drivers wouldn’t have to pay the tax at all.

“In my mind this is the future of our system and we need to start being prepared,” she said. “I think it’s logical and it needs to happen, but there are a few little technicalities that we’ll have to work out.”

Beyer said the bill will be heard by the House Transportation and Economic Development Committee this week.