Labour is pressing ahead with plans to make hybrid drivers liable for a new pay-per-mile tax despite admitting they barely use their vehicles in electric mode. The Telegraph has the story.
Plug-in hybrid cars (PHEV) will become liable for Rachel Reeves’s new electric road tax from 2028, with each mile driven attracting a 1.5p fee. It will be half the 3p levy paid by owners of electric vehicles (EVs).
Last year, justifying the policy, the Treasury said PHEV motorists drove “more or less than 50% in electric mode”. But analysis quietly published by the Department for Transport last week revealed that the Government had overestimated the number of miles plug-in hybrid owners covered with battery power.
“Evidence indicates that PHEVs complete a smaller proportion of their journeys in electric mode than previously assumed,” the document on fuel efficiency read.
Critics said the decision to tax PHEV drivers pay-per-mile and fuel duty felt like “double taxation”.
Despite this, the Government will press ahead with the tax in two years’ time. Known as electric vehicle excise duty (eVED), the tax is being introduced to offset some of the money lost from dwindling fuel duty receipts.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimates pay-per-mile will bring in £7 billion for the Treasury come 2050. That is far below the £24 billion currently raised each year from fuel duty.
Plug-in hybrids typically have a limited range in their battery pack, so it is common for drivers to ignore the electric capability of their car.
The average range of the electric component of a PHEV is 15 to 60 miles. This is dwarfed by the capabilities of pure electric vehicles, which can achieve in excess of 300 miles on one charge, according to tests run by the consumer group Which?
The limited battery range of PHEVs means many owners don’t bother charging their car or using the electric function. Yet they will still be charged 1.5p for every mile they drive, in addition to what they already pay in fuel duty, which is equivalent to 6-7p per mile.
PHEV owner Ross Williamson said: “While there is logic in pure EVs having a charge per mile, I struggle with hybrids such as my Land Rover Defender P400 paying a charge on total mileage.
“It has a maximum electric range of 26 miles.
“I already pay full road tax of £620 a year and fuel duty on the vast majority of my mileage, so the Government’s argument makes little sense and feels like double taxation.”
Worth reading in full.
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Its just another tax scam, my advice folks buy old petrol models, this lot are finished in 3 years and Net zero will be scrapped.
It’s been obvious for some time, more or less confirmed in comments here, that PHEVs (and HEVs) have a very small useful operating window. It’s a scandal that they could be used for tax purposes as company cars, the opposite end of the operating scale. When not running on electric, they’re dragging the weight of the batteries around, often at motorway speeds. What does that do for fuel consumptoon? Who cares?
Literally a ‘tax vehicle’…
You couldn’t pay me enough to buy or lease or rent a car that I had to plug into the wall. I want a car, not a bloody kettle.
Yeah, but you’d be saVIng thE pLAnEt, tof! That alone has got to make it worth it, think of your children and grandchildren and baby seals.
My second hand hybrid has 22 mile electric range, 320 mile petrol, I got it for the road tax, £0 first year and now £20. Government set the road tax, the cons changed it so that hybrids registered after 2017 if i recall, tax went to £250, making the car pointless.
Time to look into mileage suppression technology.
“more or less than 50% in electric mode” – that’s got both 0% and 100% covered then.
Yes… that mysterious number “up to” is in there as well.
Similar to that other strange number, “several”.
I offer a prize of a schooner of Cyprus Cream Sherry to the first person who can correctly give the answer to: square root of Up-to x Several, divided by More-or-less.
They need the money to fund their bankrupt, illiquid, Socialist, welfare-state, crony public workers, and bribes for non-productive voters and immigrants.
Motoring has always been an easy target to tax.
See the various taxes on motor fuel, plus road fund licence, plus car tax, speeding fines, parking tickets.
Like the robber who was asked why he kept robbing banks – because that’s where the money is.
Why keep taxing cars…..
“The limited battery range of PHEVs means many owners don’t bother charging their car or using the electric function.”
So why did they buy one? Hauling the seldom/never used battery around uses more fuel = destroying the planet.
”… the capabilities of pure electric vehicles, which can achieve in excess of 300 miles on one charge, according to tests run by the consumer group Which?”
”Can” and according to “tests”… downhill with a following wind.
My wife and I both have PHEVs as company vehicles. Neither of us suscribe to the belief that C02 emmissions are the primary driver of climate. She chose her car on 2 criteria – how comfortable it is (she has a bad back) and to minimise the tax payable on the vehicle – I chose mine purely on the basis of the least tax payable. Both decisions were primarily influenced by government taxation policy. I charge mine daily at work – whereas she has never charged hers. Fortunately, we’ll both be 66 when these policies commence – so plan to leave work before it is in force.
This tax will have a big effect on the new car market; however, I have no sympathy for car manufacturers – and indeed any company – that has been compliant when they’ve been badly affected by nonsensical, arbitrary government decisions without kicking back. For cars, the sequence has been petrol good, diesel bad, diesel good, petrol bad, electric good – lets tax the shit out of it. We need a government that stops interfering and making ill-thought out, dangerous and unsubstantiated decisions.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for that government…
As long as they are not using the heater, aircon, wipers or lights.