"Personally I would prefer other methods to make good the tax shortfall such as road pricing"

"It's not fair that a pensioner doing fewer than 4,000 miles a year on badly maintained local roads should pay as much as a business traveller doing more than 20,000 miles a year"

"I've always said that VED should be put onto fuel so that the heaviest users pay the most tax."

"To combat congestion, the physical size of cars could also partly determine the tax rate, so that cars that exceed a certain 'footprint' in terms of their length or width would pay more."

Everyone favours a tax system where they pay the least, as the above comments demonstrate. I do too! Therefore I favour the comment favouring a tax on the size of the car! The reality is, the motorist is a cash cow.

In my area (Fife and Tayside), before the pandemic, the public transport system was limited and infrequent. Now due to lack of bus drivers, services are cancelled left, right and centre (with little notice). The railways were never known for their reliability anyway, but now they have been having industrial action for months. It's simply impossible to rely on public transport to get to and from work. For many of us the car is the ONLY choice.

Increasing tax on road transport increases the cost of everything we buy, whether in the supermarket, local shops or online. It all gets transported by road. The consumer always picks up the extra cost.

The reality is that ALL forms of transport are bad for the environment. With EV's you still have the pollution with the build and scrapping process. You have all the issues with producing the batteries, but the eco warriors don't want to talk about that.

Electric buses: you still have to manufacture them. The advantage over ICE is that the emissions are produced at the power station (nuclear, oil, gas etc), not in the town or city centre.

Wind farms are hardly green, you still have to build the things and all the access roads. You still need to drive to them to maintain them.

I saw a programme a few years ago about offshore wind. Due to poor weather they couldn't send a crew out to maintain them by boat, so they sent them out by helicopter. Again, the eco warriors won't talk about this.

Cycling may suit some fitness fanatics, who have access to suitable infrastructure and showers at work! My commute is on unlit busy fast roads without cycle lanes.

However back to the opening post. Taxing EV's was always going to happen. The government of the day always taxes as many citizens as they can, for as much as they can. As EV's sales are taking off, they can (and will) now tax them for as much as they can.

Inevitably EVs will have to pay VED at some stage, and petrol and diesel vehicles will probably have to pay higher taxes.

To combat congestion, the physical size of cars could also partly determine the tax rate, so that cars that exceed a certain 'footprint' in terms of their length or width would pay more.

.

The size of cars makes little difference to congestion - a narrow/low car takes the same space as a wide/high car and the length makes little difference as the safe cgap to cars in front/behind needs to be taken into account.

Sure, when they're moving.

But the side streets around here are harder to navigate because bigger and bigger cars are parked up.

The size of cars makes little difference to congestion

does on and in town where the road space width wise is limited, I come across this everyday where someone in a SUV gets stuck because of a parked car and they do not or are unable to overtake the car due to traffic from opposite direction, this holds everyone behind up, so yes it does make a difference to congestion. and they should either learn to drive or get a smaller car they can drive IMO