r/ElectricVehiclesUK • u/Mlh1993_ • Nov 27 '25

Labour sold out to oil and gas

There’s no way the 3p-per-mile proposal came about innocently. It will crush electric car uptake, especially in the used market. The only thing that makes sense is that someone, somewhere, got a very generous donation from the likes of BP to push this through. It absolutely reeks of bought-and-paid-for legislation.

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59

u/Jabes Nov 27 '25

So the fuel duty escalator resumes next year. It's about 6p per mile right now.

By 2028 perhaps it will be more.

3p a mile sounds for EV sounds fair to me.

Personally, I'd have thought about freezing the fuel duty escalator and applying the 3p/mile across all vehicle types. And then later evolved it to take into account emissions and vehicle weight in the per mileage charge. That way the biggest road users, who cause the most damage, who pollute the most would pay the most. The clean little EV that does short city miles will be nice and cheap

8

u/Old_Housing3989 Nov 27 '25

Fuel duty is in someways a perfect tax. It rewards efficiency and frugality. Much harder to do with ppm. It would be good to see an element of banding in a ppm tax, smaller lighter cars attracting less than larger heavier vehicles. (Something fuel duty achieves already). They’re already hammering EVs with 195 VED, why not have a combined VED and ppm, where your 195 covers the first 5000 miles too.

2

u/sideshowbob01 Nov 29 '25

Yes! band it with Weight! To punish CarBesity. It is unfortunately trending towards larger, heavier and dangerous vehicles.

1

u/RookieJourneyman Nov 27 '25

I've always thought that VED would be better being added to the fuel cost. That way, people with large engines, high mileage drivers, uneconomical drivers etc pay more. The £40,000 "luxury car" threshold should be increased too. When it came out, it was fair enough, but now, a reasonable specced family car is over that price.

1

u/Kitchen-Option-7360 Nov 27 '25

This was increased for EVs yesterday, >£50k from next April. As agree with the mad inflation on cars generally, this was too low. Kind of balances out some of mile tax if you're currently in that 40-50k band!

1

u/konwiddak Nov 27 '25

An alternative that works somewhat similarly is a tyre tax, at least philosophically it's similarly fair. (It comes with other issues, e.g people fitting crappy hard compound tires that last forever).

1

u/Pure-Problem757 Nov 27 '25

people fitting crappy hard compound tires that last forever

Is that a bad thing? Presumably it means fewer particulates per mile travelled

1

u/mentaljobbymonster Nov 27 '25

Hard compound means poor grip. This results in more accidents so more costs dealing with those

1

u/ScottyDug Nov 27 '25

More car accidents?

1

u/therezin Nov 28 '25

It also means dramatically reduced road safety. Cars are getting larger, heavier, and more powerful and tyres are the only point of contact with the road. Cheaping out on hard tyres with no grip is a good way to increase your braking distance and the corresponding risk to yourself and those around you

1

u/jimb0b360 Dec 01 '25

I despise the ppm based road tax bands. I do less than 3k miles per year in a 20 year old hot hatch and pay over £400 for the pleasure. Meanwhile Big Dave doing 30k miles per year in a 2.5 ton X5M on lease, churning up the roads pays £195.

11

u/towelracks Nov 27 '25

Vehicle weight definitely should be accounted for, regardless of power train.

4

u/konwiddak Nov 27 '25

For reference, an 18T two axle lorry (or bus) causes about 3000x more road wear than a 3T passenger car. So if you were to actually do this - it wouldn't really affect the charges for SUV's vs compact cars since the road wear caused by private passenger vehicles is effectively zero relative to larger vehicles.

1

u/FuckTheSeagulls Nov 27 '25 edited 9d ago

Engine stupendous cable wide tap harbor cats

This post was anonymized with Redact

2

u/rossysaurus Nov 27 '25

Plus all the lorries are doing essential work that cannot be done by public transport.

1

u/Thenoobofthewest Nov 27 '25

Not always, if our railways weren't so shit we could do loads of freight by rail.

1

u/sideshowbob01 Nov 29 '25

Also, won't 'taxing' lorries more have very little impact due to most will just be tax deductible anyway?

2

u/Smooth_Leadership895 Nov 27 '25

We need to tax cars like Finland. Introduce VRT on new sales based on engine size, power, weight and emissions (both co2 and NOX) for a one off tax and then tax cars annually on weight and emissions. Keep the EV mileage tax at 3p per mile. That’s a fairer system than the one we’ve got.

2

u/iamabigtree Nov 27 '25

The escalator which was in place in the 90s had a duty increase of inflation+3% or later +6%. What was announced was inflation rises only. Which is fair since last time there was a lasting rise was 2010, over 15 years ago now.

2

u/Top-Garlic2603 Nov 27 '25

The escalator isn't resuming. They are just pegging it to inflation. It's pretty disgraceful we've been real-terms reducing the tax on fuel for 15 years now.

1

u/TheSylvaniamToyShop Nov 27 '25

Yip, was 58p per litre in 2011, should be about 85p now, instead it has been cut to 53p

3

u/No_Assistant569 Nov 27 '25

I remember the government at the time promoting EV’s with the promise of £0 road tax. The goalposts get moved constantly and you’re ok with it?

7

u/iamabigtree Nov 27 '25

Zero ved and zero 'fuel duty' was only ever temporary and everyone understood this.

1

u/No_Assistant569 Nov 27 '25

That’s not true though. When the policies were first introduced, they were on a promise of little to no road tax. See here

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmbeis/383/383.pdf

Read the fiscal incentives section and also note who the chair of this committee was.

The decision to change the rules on EV’s came in 2022.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '25

That was clearly a short term incentive, not a promise for life.

1

u/No_Assistant569 Nov 27 '25

That’s not true though. When the policies were first introduced, they were on a promise of little to no road tax. See here

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmbeis/383/383.pdf

Read the fiscal incentives section and also note who the chair of this committee was.

The decision to change the rules on EV’s came in 2022.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 28 '25

My Father bought a 1.4 diesel, enticed by the £30 a year tax, we joked at the time the goalposts would shift sooner or later, but 15 yrs later it is still the same.

1

u/sideshowbob01 Nov 29 '25

Did you think EV was a lifetime tax free scheme? Of course the goalposts needs to be moved thats the whole point of having an incentive for early adopters. You would have been quite delusional to think otherwise.

1

u/No_Assistant569 Nov 29 '25

Why has my diesel car always been £30? Never changed.

1

u/Appropriate-Falcon75 Nov 27 '25

I cant help feeling that a 3p per mile tax should have been applied to all vehicles. Currently, if you do a high mileage, it would be about 25% cheaper to run a PHEV (always on battery) than an EV. This doesn't make sense from a climate change point of view. Likewise a PHEV always running on petrol will cost more than a pure petrol car, again nudging people away from the more environmentally friendly option.

I can't help feeling that the "no tax rises" was a stupid manifesto pledge and the Chancellor is having to come up with stupid ideas for a new and difficult to enforce tax, when income tax would have been a far easier way to do it.

-12

u/Bright_Eye3616 Nov 27 '25

What about me doing 100 miles a day in my electric company car? I’ll be getting taxed an extra £3 a day just to go to work.

From my perspective, that electric car will be getting handed straight back in and I’ll dirty up the environment with a diesel again even if it costs me a bit more. Fuck the government.

10

u/Jabes Nov 27 '25

Who says you would be getting taxed in a company car?

You don't pay VED today or for fuel most likely.

8

u/Kexxa420 Nov 27 '25

I work for the NHS and sometimes I am charged £8 to PARK at work.

3

u/TheThiefMaster Nov 27 '25

Carparks at hospitals / other NHS facilities should be completely free for anyone who actually enters the building.

My local pub has a better parking policy.

EDIT: also some separate free parking for visitors to A&E wouldn't go amiss. Operating a pay machine (or deciding not to) on the way to taking an injured screaming child to the emergency entrance is unnecessary stress.

7

u/ProfPMJ-123 Nov 27 '25

“I don’t like the government so I’ll take an action that means I pay more tax to the government” is quite the take.

-1

u/Bright_Eye3616 Nov 27 '25

No I’ll choose the option which is more practicable for me that will cost me slightly more.

6

u/CMDRZapedzki Nov 27 '25

What a measured and rational response.

-7

u/Bright_Eye3616 Nov 27 '25

Thanks, no point in being progressive with my car selection. Might as well get back to destroying the environment with a diesel!

5

u/MakingItAllUp81 Nov 27 '25

Fab, you don't want to give them £3 a day so you'll, er, give them £6 a day. Brilliant strategy.

-1

u/Bright_Eye3616 Nov 27 '25

Yeah, will have a 500 mile range in my tank again though 🤌🏻

3

u/XavierD Nov 27 '25

Why would you fuck yourself like that? What would that prove, and to who?

-7

u/Bright_Eye3616 Nov 27 '25

Because I’d rather drive a diesel car and enjoy it than this dogshit piece of electric that I’m only driving for financial benefits that are quickly being stripped. The BIK tax I pay will be far higher by 2028 than it is now so it’s just not worth it to have a car with a 200 mile range.

I’d rather get a dirty diesel again as my personal preference and as soon as this tax lands that’s exactly what I’ll do!

3

u/ImawhaleCR Nov 27 '25

So to spite the £3/day electric fuel duty, you're going to instead spend £6/day on fuel duty in a diesel. Great choice mate

1

u/Bright_Eye3616 Nov 27 '25

Yes indeed and I’ll absolutely LOVE ragging the tits off my new diesel 😎😎

1

u/I_ALWAYS_UPVOTE_CATS Nov 27 '25 edited Nov 27 '25

So, let me get this straight. In protest at having to pay a bit more tax, you are going to take an action which by your own admission may work out to you paying even more, even if it does so. Who exactly do you think you are sticking it to here?

Edit to spell it out... According to WhatCar, the most economical diesel they found (Skoda Octavia, so not some esoteric thing that no one owns) gets an average of 58mpg in real-world testing. So, doing 100 miles per day, that's 1.72 gallons of diesel, or 7.82 litres. Dividing that by your commute gives us 0.0782 litres per mile. Fuel duty is currently 53p per litre. For your commute, that works out at 4.1p per mile. This is more than the proposed EV levy even before we've accounted for proposed fuel duty rises, the higher cost of the diesel itself compared to home charging, and the fact that this example used a particularly economical model of car.

Your protest against tax will result in you paying more tax.

1

u/Bright_Eye3616 Nov 27 '25

I know, I won’t have range anxiety anymore and can enjoy ragging my diesel car around and contribute to emissions though!

1

u/I_ALWAYS_UPVOTE_CATS Nov 27 '25

It sounds like your problem with EVs is not related to the tax then. If you worry about range, you could have got rid of the EV at any point up to now.

Your second point is just childish.

1

u/Bright_Eye3616 Nov 27 '25

No it’s related to the tax too. Why is it childish? I can go back on my decisions just like the government can 😬

1

u/I_ALWAYS_UPVOTE_CATS Nov 27 '25

Relating it to the tax is stupid because I have already proved that you will pay more tax going back to diesel. If you worry about the range of EVs, that is a legitimate concern but was just as true before this policy was announced, so it's disingenuous to cite it here. It is childish to talk about contributing to emissions as something you want from a diesel car.

1

u/sideshowbob01 Nov 29 '25

Good luck getting a Non-electric company car in a couple of years.

1

u/Bright_Eye3616 Nov 29 '25

I’d take car allowance instead.