A small transponder would facilitate fraud, too easy to move. And there is still millions of cars. As someone mentioned, what about gas in canisters for lawnmowers, etc other than cars. RFID is an issue now for privacy and has just been used to install viruses.
You have paid to use the toll roads and expenses like the cards are filtered into the price. This is a massive scale forced plan people early people in this thread have expressed with holes in it.
In 2003, The Bureau of Transportation estimated that there was 204 million vehicles in the US. It may be higher due to unregistered vehicles.
in 2004 It was said that 168,000 gas stations were in the US. An average station in Los Angeles has 16 fueling points. This means that there will need to be 2,688,000 Readers to read said chips. Obviously the readers will not cost $1.
Just to pay for a basic card that will have a possibility of fraud is 204 million dollars. If we estimate a single retrofit per gas station which includes all pumps with readers, wiring and a computer with router, etc at a low of 30 grand we have a US total of a low of 5,040,000,000 for gas stations plus the 204 million for the cards you estimate at $1.
Now we have to pay for people to monitor this to investigate fraud and operate the system yearly for more expenses.
So we have to overcome getting the public to approve all this and find funding for it. I can't imagine where to get it at that will not affect all consumers. If its a tax on gas until its paid for then all other items will go up from groceries, clothing, etc since they feel the sting too.
But we can bypass this all entirely and do it through the DMV with little setbacks from the public. It already works in Europe. A form of it with parking tickets already works here, don't pay the fees you can't renew the reg or get parking permits. The fees each year would be including in vehicle registration which if not paid means you cannot have stickers or parking permits.
SO the route the others proposed at the pump, where do we get the funding that makes all the parties involved happy?
So a LOW number to implement this plan would be