February Magazine - Nick Lomas EVs

The government are already looking at how they will recoupe loses as more and more buy EV's. They are already loosing millions as not getting duty on fuel and no road tax. Whatever happens the car driver will always be out of pocket. 

I think motorists always complain about how much they are charged in taxes!!! In 2013 I paid £1.40 a litre for diesel but the last time I filled up at the end of 2020 I paid £1.15 a litre. I don't hear anyone saying that fuel is too cheap now? I can't see fossil fuels like petrol and diesel getting anymore expensive, if anything with the increasing numbers of LV's you could see the price get even lower. Where the Government has made a mistake in recent years is not applying any sort of price escalator on fuel duties to allow for inflation. So if they have it in mind to increase fuel duties now it will come as a bigger shock to motorists. The Government will have to change the way it does things as LV's start to be the dominant type of vehicle. They can't tax electricity as that would impact of domestic prices. As most people will be able to charge at home I don't see how they could do that. Eventually they introduce a VED tax for EV's but I imagine that is a few years off. As I mentioned upthread I imagine road pricing will be the main way Governments raise revenues from drivers in the future. Given that its unlikely all roads will be priced the same and time of day may make a difference then the motorist will have a degree of choice in how much it costs them, a choice they don't have at the moment.

David

I think your "most people will be able to charge at home " does not compute ,when most house building from the 1950s has been to cram as many properties as possible in the smallest possible space without space to park vehicles, even the new estates being built now are not future EV charging friendly ,  even not seem to be built with cars in mind as how many now only have one vehicle

My job takes me to numerous new build sites , I'm noticing more communial parking areas . What I'm not seeing are EV charging points being installed into the bays , which would be easy to do in a sites early stages . It appears to me the government are making the right noises , but the building trade isn't  listening.

I expect its a local authority issue. There are lots of grants available to include the infrastructure, here in MK we have the highest number of charging points outside of London. Having said that not many of them are at individual houses so I imagine people will have to go to a charging facilities, perhaps like that rather swish one,  in Essex I think, which is like a garage forecourt. For anyone with a property where a charging point could be installed I am pretty sure there is  grant from Government  which covers a fair slice of the cost. 

David

It is what many are in this area are finding, and even the transport minister or ours and several. others of our friends LAs have no real plan it seems, to enable convenient charging of EVs, and they agree with what I have noticed with new build  housing estates, even when HMG expect the UK to change to EVs in the future 

Just one example is the road we live there are Over 200 houses and  there is 7 houses that can have any chance of charging at the property

You’ll go to ‘fuel stations’ the fuel being electric not diesel or petrol. Folk don’t have diesel or petrol pumps on their property so they don’t need electric charge points. We will manage it as we do all vehicle fuel. When it gets low-fill it up👍🏻

But it's going to take a lot longer than 5 minutes to charge a vehicle , I can see massive queues forming .

You are thinking for 2021, when oil burners are banned the charging system will be up to speed👍🏻. 14 years is a lifetime in technology advancement terms.

When EVs Can do what a diesel engined car will do in mpg with a c/van on the hook, then it may be a possible alternative