EVs are easy. Internet connected? Yes.

Charge and pay on the go..

And expect huge jams on roads avoiding charges

Current policy is to encourage car owners to go electric (rightly or wrongly). Hence subsidies on EV purchases, lower RFL and no taxation of "fuel" costs.

Most taxation goes into a central "pot" from which public services are paid. Any reduction in income from ICE needs to be covered by either lower public spending or taxation increases elsewhere. Covid costs have made affordability matters much more acute!

It is inevitable that EV subsidies will be phased out - likely when the transition to EVs is substantially unstoppable. My personal guess is that when new EV sales account for 20-30% of the new car market the losses to the Treasury will become much more apparent and alternative taxation regimes will be required.

Road charging, taxing recharging, or fixed rate RFL are all possible - but fairly flexing the charge with usage seems best. Taxing electrical consumption for charging EVs is open to abuse - differentiating between domestic and EV, PV home generation etc. So it leaves only road charging.

The only real question is when, and will costs per mile be applied to all roads, some roads, flexed by time of day etc. The sooner the principles are agreed the sooner Rishi can mandate the installation in all new EVs.

"What sort of control does it give?"

As any sort of road charging scheme is going to be designed to charge a vehicle owner by location and time of day the implications for personal liberty of knowing where every vehicle is at any time are mind boggling.

The problem has already been solved in Australia, they have introduced a purchase tax on all new electric vehicles. Other countries better watch out!

How does that solve the problem? The problem is the revenue from petrol and diesel going down - a one off tax won't be enough to cover that.

What about a tax on Electricity used, all they need is a smart meter in line with charger and add tax on the usage, much easier than any other method ie road charging.

<< We are talking £bs spend every year on infrastructure. With 2m new cars a year , an extra £1,000 will only raise £2b a year... One thing you can depend on: if we rely on the Government to do it, it will be a costly shambles.. >>

Another dependable thing is that most road users are unwilling to fork out enough to cover the cost of the infrastructure they want. The money can come from some other form of taxation. Why ? (and where ?)

tax collected through motoring is not spent on the infrastructure, otherwise we would have first world class roads instead of fourth world class roads. No matter what they do they have to at least maintain or increase the tax take from motorists. No matter what you drive there must be a method of working out the cost per mile for that vehicle. A lot fairer than lots of different tax grabs. Although the different taxes involved do confuse the general public enough to hide what we really pay. The cost per mile would expose that. A few shocks in store.

but wasn’t the ved change from 2017 supposed to be spent on the road infrastructure from 2020.?

The problem has already been solved in Australia, they have introduced a purchase tax on all new electric vehicles. Other countries better watch out!

Can you put up a link to this? I live in Australia and haven't heard of it.

Unless I read it wrong its been proposed thats all, and now its being opposed according to this

thedriven.io/2020/11/12/south-australias-proposed-...e.

From that article:

"A report from accounting giant Ernst & Young released in September found that replacing a petrol or diesel car with an EV delivers a $1,370 benefit to government revenues and an $8,763 net benefit to the economy over a ten-year life span."

If that's true, it's interesting that the Australian equivalent of VAT on the purchase price of the EV and on the electricity used more than compensates for the loss of duty on petrol / diesel. Even in the comma isn't a comma but a decimal point, it's still surprising that there's a benefit to the government at all.