EV experience and information

It’s a beauty…

It does look good, though the expected £60k to £70k puts it rather out of our price range! The A290 is lovely and could be an option when our Megane reaches its end of PCP. The upcoming VW iD Polo GTi looks interesting too. It’s only holidays when we need more space. The Megane got us to Nice and back happily, albeit with some bags on the back seat. I find a lot of the Hyundais and others look terribly bland, whereas the Megane and then the Alpines look much nicer.

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We took delivery of our new Skoda Elroq Edition 85 last Friday, replacing a leased MG ZS EV.

I am very pleased with it so far. It’s very comfortable, quieter than the MG and has a reported great range of just under 360 miles. We have not been on a long trip yet to see how valid that WLTP is, but at a guess, I expect it will be 300ish, possibly a little less in winter and 330 or more summer temps.

Out of the cars we tested at a similar price, it has, in my opinion, the best interior with a variety of pleasing materials. It has plenty of room for front and rear passengers with a good boot, although not as big as the Enyaq’s.

We are hoping to keep it for some years, as this is not a lease this time but on a 0% interest PCP for 3 years. So if we do not like that car by then, we can give it back and try again with something else, but hopefully we will pay the final payment and keep it as long as possible.

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3ppm :rofl: Unbelievable.

Careful now…

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Well, EV drivers have to pay towards the upkeep of the roads, so fundamentally this sort of thing has to happen. However, there are many potential pitfalls. I haven’t seen yet how the government proposes to figure out how many miles each driver has driven. Are they going to use ANPR cameras to track each car? That would work to an extent, but many miles would be missed. Are they going to use the mileage reported at the MoT test? That would mean people who drive abroad would be paying for mileage that they did not drive in the UK. And knowing how governments work, they would do something really unfair like getting you to estimate your future mileage and pay for that, with a rebate if you did fewer miles, and extra charge if you did more. And if that were the scheme you can be that you could only claim back in 1000 mile blocks. Do they expect everyone to install some sort of GPS mileage tracker? That might be the most accurate, but a lot of people will scream “government spying”.
If this is being introduced, then I would have thought it would be fairer to remove the fuel duty completely, but charge ICE and Hybrid vehicles in the same way - though probably more than 3p per mile.

The saddest aspect is that this is a really bad time to introduce it. It will reduce the speed of the movement to EVs - particularly BEVs - contrary to what they say that they want to happen.

Surely most electric cars are binned by then in order to have a new one manufactured? :thinking::slightly_smiling_face:

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Seems odd to have the new car allowance as an incentive- then this as a disincentive.

They could add a tax to every public charge - but that would be another disincentive for EV’s (and charger installation), and wouldn’t penalise those who only / mostly charge at home. And it’s inflationary, as would be a smart tariff tax. So I guess this is the only way

But it won’t be until 2028. A lot can happen before then.

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Yes - it is odd. They are caught between a rock and a hard place, TBH. They need to replace some of the revenue from fuel duty (theoretically not all, in a fair world - only enough to cover road building, maintenance, policing, infrastructure etc.), but we know that it is actually used as a cash cow.

If they removed the fuel duty, but put an equivalent mileage charge on IC and hybrid then that would be equitable, for certain values of equitable. But to dis-incentivise EV take up like this is short-sighted. I don’t know what the answer is. I think I am right in saying that most, if not all, EVs have the ability to report their mileage to the manufacturer, so maybe that could be used.

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indeed -it is vehicle weight that causes main wear to roads - so for EV road mileage tax it seems sensible to me it is progressive based on vehicle weight - a missed opportunity -

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Yes indeed, make all those Range Rover owners pay more.

Still, there are lots of light-weight lorries on the road, so that sort of helps to compensate.

BTW the single most significant cause of damage to roads is the weather, next is the weight of lorries and other heavy vehicles like buses etc. Damage cause by cars is not as significant as some will have us believe.

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There is clearly no perfect answer. A move to road pricing for all vehicles seems eminently sensible and I guess this is the start of that. Of our 7,000 miles this year, 2,000 have been in France. Maybe it will be a case of sucking it up. The money has to come from somewhere.

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I do not think having a tax on EV mileage is that bad and rather inevitable as the success of EV sales lowers income to the treasury from fuel sales. It is likely it seems to me that taxing mileage may well become universal across propulsion types eventually rather than keep increasing fuel duty on a shrinking total value of sales.

Vehicles using the road including EVs need to contribute to the upkeep of those roads and infrastructure renewal.

For me it will still mean that the EV is cheaper to run than a fuel car as I charge at home for almost all journeys and even with the tax it will cost no more than 5p per mile in “fuel” costs.

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Tax could be added to public charging but in effect EV owners who charge with public facilities already pay extra tax on the electric fuel. The electricity from public chargers is taxed at 20% VAT not the 5% electricity is taxed at home.

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I believe that I said, in a much earlier post in this thread, that the tax could be collected automatically, like the system used for smart meters.

Most new vehicles are, or can be, connected to the internet. You will have to have an account set up online, linked to a monthly direct debit, & your vehicle will report how many miles it has covered since the last report. It will require no intervention from you at all. The tax will be automatically taken via your DD.

If your DD defaults your vehicle will automatically be disabled until you pay the outstanding balance.

I assume this type of system would be easy to set up & cheap (compared with alternatives) to administer as it is already in use by various subscription services. For example, if I default on my monthly Adobe payment for the use of Photoshop, the program automatically defaults to very basic functionality only. I believe it does this by connecting to Adobe’s servers on a monthly basis to see if my payments are up to date. If they’re not the program basically stops working until I pay the shortfall.

I’m interested in how my plug-in hybrid EV use will be calculated, I only charge at public chargers as the council stopped me from parking on the pavement to charge at home. How do I work out my 1.5p per mile EV tax?

:thinking:

It’s not been thought about at all. Not enough brain cells were available when this was decided. As another has said it won’t be until 2028 anyway - if at all.

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disabling a car from use automatically would be a step too far and over authoritarian for all kinds of reasons not least for people where transport is essential to move about in rural areas and also peoples livelihoods as a taxi driver for instance.

It is not the same as payments on software rental in any way.

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I thought pay per mile had been considered in the past - long before EVs - and it was generally regarded as problematic because of the way it disadvantaged certain groups. For example rural inhabitants who had no or very little access to public transportation, and people who needed to drive for their work, such as care workers.

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But how is that different from tax on petrol or diesel. The more miles you drive the more you consume and the more tax you pay. A litre of petrol is approx equal wherever you, albeit more remote petrol stations tend to cost more…

I think road pricing is relatively fair..l other than I think it should be road pricing factored by weight of car..

An alternative would be to put an extra tax on EV electricity… but I suspect difficult to administer with home chargers.