I doubt it, people won't pay the premium to drive ICE vehicles once the government starts to ramp up the duty, even though they don't care about the environment they will see it as an easy way to raise money in the short term, as soon as everyone is on electric they will then add tax to that.

 

There will be a need to replace the treasury income currently from VED and fuel surcharges too though.

Don’t expect EV driving subsidy to last that long.

Right now the % of EV to total cars is minute so the revenue loss is also very small. MG make headlines selling a couple of thousand ZS EV and we have 40 million cars. The number of new cars sold annually has been dropping as people keep them longer and spend on other stuff instead.

I remember well being encouraged into a leased diesel company car and then the BIK surcharge being added for the remaining 3 years of the lease and the once cheaper per litre black stuff suddenly reached par with petrol then went above.

Tax makes the world go round and right now VED and cheap home charging at ‘domestic’ electricity rates is what makes the numbers work to buy an EV.

Lower servicing is claimed but is often proving otherwise with dealer models that ‘take the piss’, new super coolant etc.

Reality is the traditional makers need to evolve or be eaten - probably by the Chinese. Too big to fail has been proven to be a myth over and over.

 

Rapid charging hubs located near urban centres will provide charging, much the same way as petrol stations do today.

Add longer range EVs and faster charging and I don't think it will be an issue.

The National Grid is not that bothered about the 'extra' power needed, except for some areas the 'wiring' needs upgrading.

 

Rapid charging hubs located near urban centres will provide charging, much the same way as petrol stations do today.

Add longer range EVs and faster charging and I don't think it will be an issue.

The National Grid is not that bothered about the 'extra' power needed, except for some areas the 'wiring' needs upgrading.

The future of private vehicles will not be dependant on fossil fuels that's a cast iron certainty.

 

If EV takeup gets to be a much greater percentage, then charge points in a given street will be the norm rather than the exception. 2040 is more than 22 years away. In 22 years, I've personally scrapped one vehicle, sold three, bought one new, and I tend to hold onto cars for longer than most, in fact, the one car I bought new I've just checked up on, I sold that on about 12 years ago, and it's now been scrapped. There's unlikely to be many of today's models of vehicles still on the road in 22 years time.

For on-street residential parking, the lamp post chargers are looking to be a suitable, cheap installation. You can almost expect that to be the norm for any lamp post renewal scheme on streets without off-street parking before too long. Renewable energy is now pretty much cheaper in the long term than any fossil or nuclear generation - it just needs sensible planning, and it's possible for charging infrastructure to vary the power draw by EVs to suit local grid load.

 

nice idea but will not work for everyone.. petrol will still be on our roads decades after the governments 2040 switch over

HI

Plenty of things do not work for everyone, many others don't work for everyone simultaneously, and there's a lot of things that would work but most people can't afford them. Such is life.

The vehicle tax can be updated every year to make it more and more uneconomical to drive a ICE vehicle until it's really a bad decision, or one for zealot petrolheads and car collectors. We'll look at those cars the same bemused way we look at horse riding on the public road today.

Military and specialist equipment like fire engines will still use ICE, but those are vehicles with extra long lifecycles, they don't follow the same renewal and maintenance rules as passenger cars. Life will move on.

 

People still live in Terraced Housing and Flats! good heavens
Who would have thought that....

Never mind there will be plenty of old petrol cars they can get cheap from charity shops for many years to come

Seriously though what @TVEV said seems sensible

 

Lyn, you sound like a horse stable owner 100 years ago saying that cars would never take off because there wern't enough petrol stations to fill them at. And that the supply of petrol couldn't cope either. The rise of EVs is unstoppable and all that you are seeing right now is the chicken/egg problem that we are all well aware of. New generation EVs already have a range of 200 miles and as most people drive less than 200 miles per week (10k miles per year) then for people without home charging a visit to a Rapid charger once a week will keep them mobile. And the way that commerce works is that supply soon follows demand so that charger units will rise as car numbers rise. Much like petrol pumps did as petrol car numbers increased.

 

Lamp post charging can be the way forward.

 

Soooo...... I think there are more cars in my street than lamposts. Do we need more lamposts installed in our street to fix the EV charging problem?

 

So you drive from one street that's parked in a residential street with no charge points in to another residential street.

You never use a car park, you don't go to work with a car park, and you never go shopping with a car park.

Have I got this picture right so far? You don't work and don't go shopping? Why do you need a car at all?

As for charging in residential streets, this is slowly being looked at. Slow, admittedly, but also being looked at.

Does that suitably rubbish your thesis on how bad you think this situation is for you? I wouldn't want you to think my reply was being too friendly.

 

So much misinformation in the op that it could almost be a troll post ?

 

Back in the not too distant past namely 1950s, most cars only had a petrol range of about 300 miles. Now we are closing in on that range with EVs. So home charging will not be that relevant. It will be a very useful bonus. Those without the facility will use public chargers at car parks, supermarkets etc, like petrol stations were used in the 50s.
This will not be the problem you fear in my opinion.

 

That's non-sequitur, and will be until such time as you can pop out for a quick energy fill (be that petrol or electricity) and be back quicker than the wife finishes getting cake and coffee ready, as you could in the 50's.

 

Quite a lot of modern cars have an effective range of 300 miles - my wife's Leon displays anything between 380 and 350 miles when it has a full tank but I when I ran it I pretty much never let the fuel gauge drop below the dash display of 50-60 miles before I made a trip to the petrol station.

My first bout of range anxiety occurred when I forgot to refuel one evening and on the way back home from work the indicator dropped to rock bottom, with the dash display saying 20 miles.

 

Tesla is on the case..!

Supercharging Cities

 

I am all for ev and the environment. but let's get real. it won't happen. even if householders have charging points outside their terrace house you cant always park there. I am able tp park outside my house once a week if lucky. and what about the thousands of homes with yellow lines outside.

All cars get parked somewhere. All those somewheres can in theory have chargepoints fitted.

So where's the problem? Of course some places are easier than others, but it's not like anyone parks their car in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, or in an alternate dimension, or in the 14th century, do they?

In any case this is all academic - within 20 years car ownership itself will be outdated. It won't matter where cars are parked because you will summon one to come and pick you up when you want to use it, and then when you're done it will go off and pick someone else up.

Have we got the electricity capacity for all this charging

Yes

petrol will still be on our roads decades after the governments 2040 switch over

Of course it will. And there are still horses in the field next to my house. What's your point?

 

And there are still horses in the field next to my house.

Horses will never catch on. No ignition key. No brakes. Smelly emissions.

 

I'm new to this forum and to EV's, having purchased an E-scooter, the range is around 19 miles. Ok for local shopping and not much else. I could double the battery capacity and look for somewhere to charge whilst out and about but i'm totally green about which scheme i should join for the occasional small 1 to 3kw charge. My view on the future of charging EV's is wireless charging along sections for commuting routes, and also charging in car park areas. My girlfriend lives in a cottage and we were discussing EV charging at her home, her idea is to extend a pole out of her bedroom window to lower a charging lead above the EV to save passing pedestrians tripping over extension cords. I feel private ownership of vehicles will be prohibitive due to cost and possible future ease of use via driverless vehicles that will be pre booked to arrive at a place and time in question by request. Until the future arrives we will be scurrying around making the best of what's available to us, which will always be controlled by commercial interests, unless consumers find independence, which seems unlikely.

 

The problem isn't going to be infrastructure at all. It's going to be behavioral. Have any of you ever driven through poorer/rough neighbourhoods? Rows of cars parked at the roadside and plugged in to lamp posts or other chargers will routinely have charging cables ripped out of charge ports by feral youths, causing damage to both vehicles and charging infrastructure. I certainly wouldn't leave my car in the average street of terrace houses around here with a lead plugged into it without being constantly worried about theft or vandalism and it's the same in poorer areas of towns and cities all over the UK.

 

The infrastructure is still very important, deciding on locations and type of chargers to install.

Security will also be a consideration, no matter what neighbourhood that you live in.

Which brings the focus back to properly managed RAPID charging hubs located near urban centres.

 

System will end up unfair though. Poorer people who live in terrace housing/flats will end up paying through the nose for electricity at rapid chargers which will end up heavily taxed by the government once fossil fuel taxes start to dry up. Those with off road parking who can charge overnight at home on economy 7 will pay next to nothing...

 

Cheap car charging at home is unlikely to remain though. Government will find a way of shafting all EV drivers so that driving an EV is no cheaper than using a petrol or diesel. They always do.

 

Holy Thread Resurrection Batman!

 

Yes, but it was interesting to read the first post talking about 2040 after recent news of it changing to "plug in only" from 2030 and "BEV only" from 2035. Or hydrogen of course 😉

 

Probably more relevant again since the new dates for the ban

 

Also worth noting, when you charge away from home you are paying 20% VAT on the electric...

 

Just charge per mile driven with camera number plate recognition on major roads/junctions.

 

I think this is the way it will go, smart motorways get rolled out under this new guise and you just get a bill every month, with thresholds you can set to alert you within a few hours if your due to exceed it via text/email

 

The present bands of car tax to discourage gas guzzlers has always had a large anomaly where a 5 litre V6 might only drive 2000 miles pa and 1 litre Fiesta clock up 50,000 miles pa. Making the desire to restrict CO2 by such a tax structure look quite foolish. It has always made much more sense to tax by mileage instead. And quite why such a levy wasn't loaded to the fuel tax per litre beats me. Absolutely impossible to avoid the tax without engaging in drive-away fuel station robberies. Of course there will also be a desire by authorities to have an annual check on registrations linked to owners names and addresses. And a modest annual flat fee for all vehicles would be perfectly acceptable.

The problem is starting to become acute with the rise of EVs. They are in the classic cleft stick of needing to incentivise EV ownership but at the same time being faced with declining car tax and fuel revenues. This is compounded by the political nightmare of trying to tax EVs electrical fuel input when a huge number of such charge events are included in the normal domestic usage for cooking. Imagine the street protests by non-car-owners and the lower-income masses. Even turning to some form of smart meter attached to home chargers would be a total minefield and easily circumvented by diverting the cooker point to an outside socket. Forget it.

Which goes back full circle to road pricing by other means. Technically this is not a real problem as long as it is only rolled out to major A roads and motorways. The use of RFID cards for smart toll booths is now pretty robust. And could be deployed to main roads rapidly. ANPR would just encourage number plate cloning of course and lead to a plethora of account disputes as you are billed for usage on the M5 at the same instant as your actual drive on the M1. Even RFID readers only on main arterials would create numerous rat run routes through towns and villages rather than use the tolled main roads, which completely flys in the face of why bypasses and such were built in the first place. Perhaps an annual mileage check at MOT time - or an annual declaration in the first 3 years - leading to a large direct debit bill could be proposed. Not an attractive idea to some. But could be softened by a 'guestimate' monthly bill based on a self-declaration annual estimate, with an annual check to make a final payment to cover any shortfall.

Of course, this is why Governments favour H2 as fuel. Because they then have total control of distribution and tax at the pump just as they have with petrol. Any difficulties over road pricing could be solved by that. But unfortunately, the arguments in favour of that is being undermined by simple economics of the price of such fuel and logistic issues in storage and distribution. As well as the fact that EV battery range and charge speed technology is improving monthly; making the oft-quoted H2 advantage of loading 300 miles in 5 minutes less relevant by the day.

The next few years will inevitably show the way they intend to square this circle. But we all know that whatever way it goes it will cost us all money.

 

Controversial opinion:- If the government hadn't taxed fuel in the first place, they wouldn't be losing tax revenue now!

 

True - and we'd still be paying 33% basic rate tax. There has been a general movement from income to consumption taxes since the Wilson Government.

 

I think there are very good arguments to put all taxation onto income tax, and have no other form of taxes.

By manipulating the strata of tax rates, this could be a very progressive policy.

(I also think having zero income tax is a good idea, but it is more likely that the needy and/or incompetent will be unable to thrive in the competitive environment that would create, and people might get all stressed and guilty because it'll be more obvious then that there are such people [whereas at the moment there are still such people, but they don't notice or care much].)