EV pay per mile - disabled drivers

ThorOdinson

The usual reason these things are leaked is to measure public opinion. If they were unpopular, they just pretend they were never going to do them anyway, it was just an idea that was rejected etc. 

So write to your MP.

Goudy

The government have been "leaking" this for years, long before EV's were readily available on the market.

From what I have read they think they are actually late to the party with introducing a scheme.

They knew the mandated move away from fossil fuelled cars would create a hole in their finances due the duty on fuel.

They realise they haven't been upfront about this problem, it was actually ignored, mainly because of the somewhat negative perception the vast majority had (some still have) regarding adoption of EV's and the need to get industry onboard with car production and sales but also with infrastructure for charging.

The concept was sold under the premise of it being a cheaper, cleaner option with little thought to the financal drawbacks of the country's tax revenue.

The thought now is that they should have started a (low cost) PPM scheme at the beginning and continually ramped it up as adoption became more widespread.
This might have slowed adoption, but they could have unlocked fuel duty at the same time and balanced things out better.

Everything now is telling the government EV's should have started on par with fossil fuel vehicles with regards to taxation, not below them.

New Zealand introduced a Road User Charge (RUC) for diesels (there is no tax on diesel) then expanded it to EV's which has caused the sales of new EV's over there to plummet.
Again the general consensus seems to suggest everyone would have been more happy to have known before hand so they could have made an informed choice.
Ok, most reasonable people would have guessed but that's not the same as knowing for certain what this scheme would cost.

There will obviously never be a good time to introduce something like this but the further we go down the EV road, the more resistance a PPM scheme will have and the bigger the black hole the government is staring at.

They can no longer keep selling the idea of them begin a cheaper to run option then suddenly try to make all the losses on fuel duty back.

The government now have a choice.
Do they rip the plaster that has been created to help EV sales and their adoption off now.
Or do they continue to wait then have to squeeze blood from every EV owner later to make up the ever increasing short fall.

My guess is a bit of both.
They will continue to try and make EV's appear cheaper to run than fossil fuelled vehicles, but still ramp up revenue for them year on year.
Then once they have kicked the can down the road as far as they possibly can, squeeze the living daylights out of owners and blame someone else for it.

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laidbackgjr said:

The problem with MOT mileages etc, is that if I take my car overseas and do mileage there, I would still be taxed on that mileage in the UK, so not sure simple mileage records really work. I think it will have to be some form of tracking app installed in the vehicle and reporting mileage only in the UK.

How is that a problem for HMG?

Very much a you problem, and the onus will be on you to prove that you did the mileage outside of the UK, presumably with a mountain of form filling (and required signatures & documentation from border controls that you didn't get) so high that most people won't bother for the odd thousand mile holiday, and all those £30s add up.

Car_54

laidbackgjr said:

The problem with MOT mileages etc, is that if I take my car overseas and do mileage there, I would still be taxed on that mileage in the UK, so not sure simple mileage records really work. I think it will have to be some form of tracking app installed in the vehicle and reporting mileage only in the UK.

Why should "overseas" mileage be exempted?

Bigphil1474

I think he means that the cost to the UK road network of those miles is zero, so why should there be any tax associated with that oversees mileage. 

Personally, I can't see it happening. Takes far too much organising, and I can't see any government department being able to implement any workable solution. If they need more tax from EV's just increase EV VED. I think it's missing the point though. Most EV users are using electricity overnight, so helping the electricity generating companies out, and are reducing air pollution and reducing climate changing emissions. That's worth losing the revenue form fossil fuels to me. 

Car_54

Bigphil1474 said:

I think he means that the cost to the UK road network of those miles is zero, so why should there be any tax associated with that oversees mileage. 

AFAIK no tax in the UK is directly related to any particular costs. So far as the road network is concerned, its dependence on the "road fund" tax was severed 99 years ago.

Mildly_Miffed

It's all pure speculation, and you only need a quick glance at which quarters of the media are doing the speculating...

Long term, road pricing is the only thing that makes any kind of sense. Fuel duty raises £25bn/year in the UK. That is falling both in actual value (£27bn in 2010) and in real terms - inflation has taken that 2010 £27bn to £42bn real value today. VED is trivial in comparison, £9bn/year.

Fuel duty per litre has been fixed at 59p/litre since 2010 (inflation alone would have it at 92p/litre) - so about 6p/mile at 45mpg - and people are moving to EVs rapidly, which have zero duty paid on fuel. Also, average mileage has fallen since the pandemic.
There's no way to charge any kind of duty on electricity for road use, either.
Anything relying on owner-reporting is utterly intrinsically flawed.

The only way to do any kind of reliable, equitable road-pricing is using roadside ANPR infrastructure... and that is a VERY long way off in the real world.

Rough numbers - there's a quarter of a million miles of roads in the UK.
1% are motorways.
2.2% are centrally managed trunk A roads.

10% are local-authority managed non-trunk A roads.

7.5% are B roads.
The remaining 200,000 miles are C and unclassified roads. Much of that distance is in places with poor cellular comms.

Unless EVERY mile of EVERY road is covered, you're just going to move traffic from the main road network onto the back roads - the exact opposite of what should be encouraged.

So the big question... how on earth is that going to be implemented in any kind of reasonable timescale...?

Exodi

Bigphil1474 said:

Car_54 said:

laidbackgjr said:

The problem with MOT mileages etc, is that if I take my car overseas and do mileage there, I would still be taxed on that mileage in the UK, so not sure simple mileage records really work. I think it will have to be some form of tracking app installed in the vehicle and reporting mileage only in the UK.

Why should "overseas" mileage be exempted?

I think he means that the cost to the UK road network of those miles is zero, so why should there be any tax associated with that oversees mileage. 

At first I thought of that, and thought 'why aren't' people outraged when they fill their ICE cars up in Dover (paying fuel duty) and then drive to Paris and back on that tank of fuel?' Assuming people believe fuel duty is intended to cover road maintenance or something.

But then I thought of a scenario where you are fuelling abroad. Currently, if I decided to go on a week long trip across Europe say visiting Paris, Zurich and Brussels, in an ICE vehicle, overall journey about 1200 miles so I might fill my car up 3-4 times. As this would be done in foreign countries, there would be no UK fuel duty paid.

Under the speculated EV PPM scheme, I would be charged 1200*0.03= £36.

It's not that you're paying for roads you're not driving on (as I'm aware fuel duty does not go explicitly go towards road maintenance), it's that you're actually worse off than you would be if you were driving an ICE vehicle.

That said, if European cities charge the same sort of public charging rates as we do (0.85p/kWh), you probably need deep pockets to do that drive in an EV regardless!

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Mildly_Miffed said:

<snip>

There's no way to charge any kind of duty on electricity for road use, either.

<snip>

A levy on "EV" tarifs (being careful not to kill the Golden Goose, the "EV" tariff plus levy must still be cheaper than domestic rate)

A levy on public charging

Smart chargers snitch on the amount of energy transferred if you are trying to "get away" with an economy 7 type tariff for charging, so it is easy to levy the tax whatever tariff you are on, and even if you charge from a solar charged powerbank or your own little hydroelectric/wind/steam plant!

Smart meters snitch all the time, and they can simply levy on the estimated charge based on load and time, then put the onus on you to prove 6 hours of continuous 32A load was used for night storage or charging a powerbank.

Granny charger users without smart meters may "dodge" the tax, but these tend to be the sub 2000 miles per year drivers, who wouldn't pay extra under the proposed honour mileage system  anyway.

Grumpy_chap

Exodi said:

At first I thought of that, and thought 'why aren't' people outraged when they fill their cars up in dover (paying fuel duty) and then drive to Paris and back on that tank of fuel?' 

Well, when I had a company car / fuel card, the fuel card could only be used within UK so, for my holiday I would fill up as close as possible to the Eurotunnel terminal and aim to get back on fumes to fill up again to fill up immediately on return.  That first petrol station back in UK charges really extortionate rates so I guess they worked out there is a big market for company fuel card drivers doing the same as I did.

Difficult to get outraged when someone else is paying.

facade said:

A levy on "EV" tarifs (being careful not to kill the Golden Goose, the "EV" tariff plus levy must still be cheaper than domestic rate)

A levy on public charging

Smart chargers snitch on the amount of energy transferred if you are trying to "get away" with an economy 7 type tariff for charging, so it is easy to levy the tax whatever tariff you are on, and even if you charge from a solar charged powerbank or your own little hydroelectric/wind/steam plant!

Smart meters snitch all the time, and they can simply levy on the estimated charge based on load and time, then put the onus on you to prove 6 hours of continuous 32A load was used for night storage or charging a powerbank.

Granny charger users without smart meters may "dodge" the tax, but these tend to be the sub 2000 miles per year drivers, who wouldn't pay extra under the proposed honour mileage system  anyway.

Actually, I have an EV plus a proper home charger.  Doing around 12k miles per year.  This week, I charged on Sunday (when my tariff had free electricity) but not used the car since.  If I needed to avoid a tax levy, I would have simply charged using the granny charger, in shifts if needed, to dodge the tax detection.  That would be counter-productive as slow charging is less efficient and it would mean the load during peak hours rather than managed to off-peak using the proper charger.