Stupid — UK Putting Road Tax on EVs in 2028 – CleanTechnica

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With a new technology, if you really want it to be adopted quickly, you offer incentives to get more people to buy it. In the case of clean, the motivation is obvious — we need to stop global heating (which means we need to cut CO2 emissions) and humans would also benefit from cutting air pollution. As such, governments around the world have offered cleantech like electric vehicles various incentives. This includes not being taxed as much as fossil-powered cars are.

The UK has offered big consumer incentives to get more people to buy EVs, but now, the government seems to think it needs to implement some extra taxes on the vehicles. Rather than wait 5–10 years to make sure we switch to cleaner technologies as soon as possible, the UK government has decided it will implement a pay-per-mile road tax on EVs and plugin hybrids (PHEVs) starting in 2028.

“Under the new levy, fully electric vehicle drivers will face a tax of 3p per mile, while plug-in hybrid drivers will face a tax of 1.5p per mile. This will increase in line with inflation,” Top Gear writes. “According to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), a driver travelling 8,500 miles in an electric car in 2028-29 can therefore expect to pay £255. This is roughly equivalent to half the rate that petrol and diesel drivers pay in fuel tax.” Well, it’s good this is still a lot less than fossil-powered cars cost in fuel taxes, but, still, it seems premature and counterproductive to add EV taxes in the 2020s.

An analysis of this policy came to the conclusion the country could have 440,000 fewer electric car sales in the next 5 years due to this new tax.

I know the UK makes some boneheaded policy decisions at times, but this policy is a unfortunate surprise I did not expect from the country.

Now, there are also some counter measures reportedly getting worked into government policy. “However, it also forecasts that this could be partly offset by 320,000 extra EV sales due to other measures introduced in the budget, including raising the VED expensive car supplement threshold from £40,000 to £50,000 for electric vehicles.” But, really, what’s the point of complicating things in the next few years? Why throw a tax on EVs and then offer separate tax breaks on them?

To wrap up with some good news, the UK committed another £1.3 billion for the Electric Car Grant (up to £3,750 off of a new EV that starts below £37,000), and also committed £200 million for EV charging infrastructure. So, yeah, the government seems to have a weird, split relationship with EV policies.