Vocal Voices

I see that there are calls for the government to introduce PPM for EVs to cover the lost fuel revenue of about £25bn.

Years ago some of us said that this would happen and it now looks to be on the table. £25bn is a lot of money and it has to come from somewhere, so EVs it is.

I do not have any problem with this any more than I do with them having to pay VED at the standard rate from 1st April 2025 - should already be paying it. Where I do have a problem is with "mission creep". If PPM is brought in for EVs then it can be brought in for any vehicle, even those already paying fuel duty.

Beware!

Given that they massively increased taxes on the so called "luxury" vehicles, then set a "luxury" price just slightly over the top of just about every single EV, then decided to remove the VED exemption from 2025, not only are they going to not lose money on VED, they are going to gain.

So there is Zero justification for PPM for EV, even more so after 2025.

This is nothing more than control and a cash grab. They know that EV's already have the technology to enable PPM without any further cost and are going to abuse it.

Can't/won't tax people more on their pay, tax the driver. Of course you don't have to drive to get to work do you? Well not in the cities which is where most Labour votes come from.

Interestingly I was looking at a second car to keep here in the UK so I could leave my much newer car at home for Mrs S and fly. Which will reduce my stress even more dramatically and make things cheaper again to fly.

I found that certain vehicles at a certain age suddenly lost ALL Value. Like 300bhp Mercedes being sold for £800 or Audi A6 with near 300bhp and not too high mileage and in OK condition for £1,400.

Then I looked at the taxes. The Merc, well over £400. The Audi and a V6 Peugeot £700 per year. I've decided to buy a 2008 Peugeot with under 100k miles and the same power as my C4. £1,500 because it's a part ex they want to shift fast. But vehicle tax is only £120, even cheaper than my 2019 Euro 6 C4. Because the Euro 6 engine emits more CO2 because of the AdBlue it consumes to remove NOx.

VED is a tax scam, nothing more. If you can afford the vehicle they're going to hammer you for tax.

It was always going to happen.

Every new car sold in Europe for a while now is fitted with a GPS system; not just EVs.

If EV owners thought their honeymoon would last forever they will be proved sadly wrong.

In other news the Tory party's policy to force car manufacturers to make at least 22% of new car sales EVs from this year (they will be fined £15,000 per ICE car sold that contravenes their limit) means that the manufacturers have come up with a simple solution.

They are going to deliberately ration ICE vehicle sales so that this doesn't happen.

We are starting to see the results of virtue signalling and grandstanding, and it's not going to be pretty.

If they do that Tesla and Chinese EV's plus Kia will start to flood into the UK.

OEM's who won't produce EV do not live in a vacuum and they will lose the market.

BTW that EV is BEV, not Hybrid and they are their own worst enemy because they ignored it and went Hybrid in a BIG way. Now they are going to suffer.

UK doesn't produce many cars and most of our cars come in From Germany and Japan. I don't think the government will sanction China if the rest won't produce EV's to hit the target.

What they are going to do in 2035 in the EU is an interesting point. The EU modified their rules last year, they had a 43g CO2 from 2030 to 2035 but now it is just 0g CO2 from 2035 for all cars and vans. The longer OEM's wait the harder it is going to be for them to transition. Witness VW who makes more than half of their profit from China. Their China market has dropped dramatically and is continuing to drop dramatically. Why? Crap EV that the Chinese do not want and the local offerings are better for price and value.

VW is looking at closing factories in Germany to stem losses. This is the tip of the iceberg and they are all going to suffer.

Nobody mentioned anything about losses due to VED. The principle should be that if a vehicle is on the roads it should have VED. It makes no difference how many wheels or axles it has nor the engine size nor its physical size. If it is on the road it should have VED, no 'ifs' no 'buts', and that should be from day one.

When it comes to the £25bn black hole - it has to be filled somehow. It's a societal thing. That money goes on all sorts of things outside roads, and let's not forget that it is annual - year on year - and will rise. It is not the same as the one-off black Hole the Tories left. And look at the taxes that is going to cause. All future governments will have to deal with it.

Pay per mile (PPM) for EVs is one way of doing it; and plenty of justification for doing so. Smart chargers - public and private - where the tax on that electricity is at a different (higher) rate than domestic / industrial are also available. There are many other ways to make EV owners pay their fair share.

The EV free ride is over.

There should never have been a free ride for EV. But then again they gave free rides to things like an Aygo, my grandson has one and he is zero tax forever.

I think that if one vehicle has VED then they all should and it should not be pay per mile either. Just my view.

Feel free to conflate...

VED is to allow a vehicle to use the roads. VED should be on the vehicle, I already said that.

Fuel duty is what motorists, and others, pay for, err, fuel. It works out at so much per mile in a vehicle.

The two are not the same.

The problem is how to make the EV freeloaders pay their fair share of the lost fuel duty.

i'm sure that governments would like pay per mile. Unfortunately for them it's a bit complicated.
Yes, EVs and new ICE cars (in Europe anyhow) can be tracked and charged ££ via the GPS they have fitted.
In time perhaps even fined automatically for breaking speed limits. The speed limit on a section of road is known, the position of your car is known and your speed can be calculated.
The technology to do this has existed for years; the emergency services have been using it in their command and control systems for a long time now.
But it would be a huge, expensive undertaking to scale it up for nationwide use.

Plus and more to the point, there are millions of ICE cars running around with no GPS fitted, who can't be tracked and charged. What do you do about them?

All in all it's a mess and one which was avoidable.Trying to rig the market in favour of EVs has backfired.

One proposal, and it would work for all vehicle types, is to use the registered mileage at an MOT. The vehicle has done 20,187 miles since its last MOT so it pays 20,187 times xPPM.

Temporarily it might open up a new black market in "clocking" but eventually all cars will be fitted, or retro-fitted, with GPS. We had to get kits when wing mirrors and four-way flashers became law so it would not be a first. Motorists can already buy and fit GPS trackers if they wish so it would not be too big a step to roll them out for all.

What is absolutely certain is that some way will be found to recoup the lost fuel duty.

I still think that we need to look out for the mission creep type things as Crommers mentions above.

I do about 15k miles in Europe. These should not be charged in the UK. How are they going to do that without GPS?