OUR local shopping centre has just installed six new rapid 150 kW EV chargers to replace 50kW chargers.
With strong speculation this week that EVs will face pay-per-mile charges from 2028, these new chargers are a reminder that driving will become not only unpractical but unaffordable for anybody who does not have off-street parking. It is estimated that this is the case for at least 40 per cent of car owners across the UK.
Let’s take the Kia EV3 as an example. This is Kia’s compact SUV, with an on-the-road price of £36,005 for the 81 kWh basic version. This is about £10,000 more than an equivalent petrol model. It has a claimed range of 375 miles, but this will be more like 230 miles in real-world conditions. Efficiency is reckoned to be 3.3 to 4.0 miles/kWh in real world driving conditions – call it 3.6 miles.
On a typical annual mileage of 10,000, electricity consumption would be 2,777 kWh. At 89p/kWh, which is the price at our new charging station, that works out at £2,471 a year.
A diesel would run at maybe 40 mpg, which at current prices comes to £1,590 a year. But half of that is fuel duty – pre-tax, the annual cost would be about £800. One way or another, our Kia EV3 driver will have to pay that tax eventually, on top of his charger bill of £2,471.
A pay-per-mile tax is forecast to be set at 3p/mile, around £300 pa. But to replace the loss of fuel duty currently paid by petrol/diesel drivers, this rate would eventually have to be at least doubled. It would be payable annually as a surcharge on Vehicle Tax; the owner would have to declare his mileage online at the time of payment.
There has long been talk of road charging, using satellite technology and black boxes in cars. But this is still many years from being rolled out, if it ever is.
One consequence of this flat tax, which has really upset our green friends, is that by default they would have to pay tax on mileage driven abroad, such as when driving their Tesla to their second home in the Dordogne!
More widely, this new potential tax has been slammed because it could discourage the uptake of electric cars. But the reality is that the rest of us have had to subsidise virtue-signalling EV owners for too long. For years, the government threw thousands in subsidies to buy EVs, which also attracted ultra-low vehicle tax. There are still generous tax breaks for business and fleet buyers. And, of course, EV owners have until now not had to pay fuel duty.
It is time they paid their fair share of tax.
Off Street Charging
AS mentioned, millions of car owners in Britain have no access to off-street parking, and therefore will find it impractical or even impossible to charge at home. Their only solution will be to use public chargers.
As well as the cost issue outlined above, there will be practical considerations. In our town of about 25,000 inhabitants, we have only the six public rapid chargers I have described. On national averages, I would guess there are 12,000 cars in town, of which 7,000 might be parked on driveways. The other 5,000 would need public chargers. Most of these would have to be charged at weekends, as drivers would be at work during the week. (The alternative of charging on the way home from work would be extremely unpopular, given that they could be queueing for an hour or more with everybody else trying to do the same thing.)
You don’t need Diane Abbott’s abacus to work out that six chargers won’t be enough to cope with thousands of cars over the weekend. As perspective, the Kia EV3 quoted above would take about half an hour to charge. It is common practice for drivers to leave their cars charging while they do their shopping – this often means an hour or more, meaning that one charger might handle only ten cars or so a day.
In reality, we will need hundreds of chargers to cope with demand when all cars are electric. But there are no plans to build more at this stage. Nor is there any land available for the number that would be needed.
I have written to our Labour MP asking her what Labour’s policies are for dealing with this train wreck heading our way. In particular, I have asked whether car owners will be allowed to run their charging cables across pavements from their house to the car. This, of course, would be extremely hazardous for pedestrians and would make pavements impassable for disabled people.
Even then, there are hundreds of cars in town that cannot be parked outside the home – flats, for instance, or streets which are too narrow for parking. Are these people, who are often the poorest, to be penalised?
I’m not expecting a meaningful reply from the MP. It will be written by some lackey in the Department for Transport, and will probably be based around these talking points:
- We must get rid of petrol/diesel cars to achieve Net Zero;
- EVs are clean and better for the environment;
- EVs are cheaper to run;
- We have a target to build thousands more chargers up and down the country;
- We are investing millions in public transport and cycle paths.
Translation: We don’t give a toss about your problems. Get on a bus instead and stop moaning!
I suspect that very few members of the public are even aware of the problems I have outlined. Do they know how many miles an electric car will do per kWh? Do they know how long it takes to charge?
There has been very little discussion in the media either. In particular, motoring correspondents invariably write glowing reviews of all things electric – I wonder what incentives they have been offered?
One day the public will wake up to the harsh realities. Unfortunately it will be too late to do anything about it by then.
Quite simply, ordinary people will not be able to afford to run their already expensive to buy car, if they are forced to use public chargers.
Which has probably been the Government’s plan all along!
