Eh, the spirit of the car being very usable on electric-only is still there. The engine does charge the battery, but I’ll grant that I learned that it’s not its only purpose as I thought. But the lack of gas tax theory is a huge stretch to be honest. Even if you manage to make the legal argument that it shouldn’t be taxed, it’s pretty easy to then say it’s an electric vehicle and subject to those registration fees (albeit at the state level, and not all states have that yet). Plus, how many people have easy access to dyed non-road fuel? Especially unleaded? I’m not driving half an hour away to save a few bucks on a tank of gas.