EVs are about to become more trouble than they’re worth

I am thinking of selling my car and buying a newer, smaller, more economical one. I have as much interest and expertise in cars as I do in thermo-nuclear engineering, or crypto currency, and so I have to ask advice from friends who know about motors. My first question is: should I go electric? To which the answer, without exception, is: no. I live in a fairly remote part of the countryside, so there is the matter of charging points, and the lack thereof. In addition, the limited battery range of the car might be a problem, and I’m told, the national infrastructure for electric vehicles isn’t quite up to speed yet. My urge to do something positive for the environment might have to wait. And then, thanks to the government, comes the killer blow. EV drivers don’t buy petrol and therefore don’t pay fuel duty, which has a rather inconvenient consequence for the country’s tax revenues. Fuel duty contributes around £25bn a year to the Treasury’s coffers, so unsurprisingly, the government is looking for ways that EV drivers can make up this particular shortfall. Last week’s Budget was clear on the policy objective underpinning this. The small print in the Budget says: “As more people choose to switch to cleaner, greener electric cars … fuel duty receipts will decline. [The Electric Vehicle Excise Duty] is intended to help replace lost fuel duty revenue from cars over the long term so, like fuel duty, the amount motorists pay will vary based on the amount they drive.”It’s the final sentence that carries the punch. A mileage-based tax for electric vehicles, intended to be introduced in April 2028, might seem fair: EVs contribute just as much to the congestion and wear and tear on our roads, so why shouldn’t their drivers pay their share for the upkeep of our road network, based on usage? The difficulty comes with how this tax is calculated. The proposal is that EV drivers supply an estimate of the number of miles they intend to drive in a tax year, and they will then be charged a tax at 3p a mile. This voluntary scheme is clearly less than watertight, so buried in the Budget verbiage, is something of a provocative suggestion. The government would like to use the in-built internet and GPS tracking systems in newer EVs to interact with official databases in order to record the number of miles driven. This “in-built connectivity”, they say, would reduce tax fraud and make the process simpler and more accurate for both drivers and the Treasury. But what is actually being proposed is tracking each and every one of our journeys. The minute you leave your driveway, you are being watched. Of course, we can’t complain that details of our personal lives are held by a third party: that ship sailed a long time ago. Google knows where we are. Apple records what we are interested in, who we’ve talked to and what we have bought, while Amazon, through Alexa, has an intimate knowledge of our domestic arrangements. Yet there is a difference – for all sorts of historical and cultural reasons – between this information being held by the state, rather than commercial companies with whom we choose to transact. Conservative transport spokesman Richard Holden immediately invoked the spectre of Big Brother. He told the Daily Mail that the government “want your car gossiping to the taxman every mile you drive” while civil liberties groups, predictably, find the prospect abhorrent. Josie Appleton, the director of a pressure group called the Campaign for Freedom in Everyday Life, said that this proposal represents a “gigantic excuse to monitor and invade the liberties of e-vehicle drivers. Not only can their homes be raided to check for mileage fraud, but now their cars could have mileage monitors reporting to the DVLA”. This may be scaremongering, but there is a danger for all of us, and future generations in particular, if the Government is making an electric car less attractive at the very time it wants us all to drive one. By raising the prospect of additional taxes coupled with a threat to our individual freedoms, it gives those of us who would prefer to go electric a ready-made excuse not to do so. I’m afraid my mind is made up. The electric car was supposed to be the future, one that I was perfectly happy to embrace. But it appears, alongside some structural deficiencies, that future comes with an in-built mileage meter, a tax demand, and a rather unhealthy interest in where we’ve been and what we’ve done. For the time being, I’ll continue to do my bit for the Treasury at the petrol pump. .