The consultation on electric Vehicle Excise Duty - better known as eVED, or the three pence per mile tax - closed on 18 March 2026. I was part of episode 290 of the EV Musings podcast, a roundtable with host Gary Comerford and Jade Edwards, Head of Insights at ZapMap, where we discussed what this tax actually means, why it's landed so badly, and what the industry should be doing about it.

This post draws on that conversation. It is not a straightforward condemnation - the case for taxing EV mileage is real. But the timing, the communication, and several of the proposed mechanics are, in my professional opinion, seriously flawed.

eVED is a mileage-based tax proposed by HM Treasury, due to come into force in April 2028. Fully electric vehicles will be charged 3 pence per mile driven. Plug-in hybrids will pay 1.5 pence per mile, in recognition of the fact that they continue to pay fuel duty on petrol miles.

This sits on top of the standard Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) of £200 per year that EV drivers have already been paying since April 2025. So from 2028, an EV driver doing 10,000 miles a year will pay £300 in eVED plus £200 in VED - £500 in total annual motoring tax, before a single charging cost.

The rate is set at roughly half the fuel duty equivalent paid per mile by petrol and diesel drivers - so the government's position is that EV drivers will still pay significantly less than ICE drivers overall. On paper, that is correct. In practice, the picture is more complicated.

The rationale is straightforward. Fuel duty currently raises around £24 billion a year for the Treasury. As EV adoption grows, that revenue falls. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts it could drop to around £12 billion by the 2030s. The government needs a sustainable replacement mechanism, and a mileage-based charge is the most logical like-for-like substitute.

On this point, most people in the EV industry - including ZapMap and myself - agree that EV drivers should eventually contribute to road funding. The disagreement is not with the principle. It is with the timing, the execution, and the message it sends.

The UK has spent years trying to convince consumers that switching to electric is the right choice. Car manufacturers, charging operators, and the government itself invested heavily in messaging about lower running costs and environmental benefit. That work is not finished - in fact, we have only recently begun to see consumers say they no longer feel range anxiety.

ZapMap's position, as Jade Edwards explained on the podcast, mirrors this concern. They believe the tax contradicts the electric car grant and sends confused messaging at exactly the wrong moment in the transition.

The Office for Budget Responsibility initially estimated that eVED could result in up to 400,000 fewer electric vehicles being sold.

That figure was later revised down to approximately 150,000 - still a significant number at a time when the ZEV mandate requires manufacturers to hit increasingly ambitious zero-emission sales targets.

On the podcast, Gary shared anecdotal evidence from EV communities: people saying they are glad they did not make the switch, or that they are now reconsidering it.

I have seen the same in the communities I am part of. The confusion and complexity is putting people off - not always because of the cost itself, but because of the perception of instability.

This is the point I feel most strongly about. I live in a terraced house. I cannot install a home charger without running a cable through my bathroom - so public charging is not a choice for me, it is a necessity. The same is true for millions of drivers in flats, terraced streets, and older housing stock across the UK.

For those drivers, the cost of public charging already makes the EV proposition less compelling than it is for those with a driveway and a home charger. Adding 3p per mile on top does not feel like a modest contribution to road funding - it feels like a double penalty.

ZapMap's data suggests that for most EV drivers, even with eVED, the total cost of running an EV will remain lower than a petrol equivalent. But that headline figure assumes reasonable charging costs. At rapid public charging rates of 70–85p per kWh, the maths changes considerably.

Gary raised several implementation concerns on the podcast that are worth repeating. At the time of the consultation, the proposal required drivers to estimate their mileage and pay in advance - with no refund if they sold the car or drove fewer miles than expected. Paying in instalments would cost more. These details have reportedly been walked back following industry pressure, but they reflect a policy that was not fully thought through before it was announced.

There is also the question of enforcement. The most likely mechanism is a mileage check at MOT - but MOTs only apply after a vehicle's third year, leaving new car owners in a grey area. And as Gary pointed out, it is not currently illegal to clock a vehicle's odometer - only to sell a clocked vehicle without disclosing it.

How eVED is administered in a way that is robust, fair, and not easily gamed remains unanswered.

From a marketing and communications perspective, this is what frustrates me most. The announcement was poorly timed, poorly framed, and insufficiently joined up with the rest of government EV policy. Charging operators and automotive manufacturers - the very organisations doing the work of convincing consumers to switch - were not adequately consulted before the message went out.

There is an argument that had the government framed this as 'fuel duty will keep rising for petrol drivers - and by 2028, EV drivers will still pay less per mile even with eVED' the public reception would have been very different. That is a credible, evidence-based message. Instead, the story became 'new tax on electric cars,' and that framing has done lasting damage to consumer confidence.

Nobody in this conversation argued that EV drivers should never pay their way. The question is sequencing. Before introducing a new mileage-based tax, the industry and government should be focused on:

• Reducing the cost of public charging - this is the single biggest barrier for drivers who cannot charge at home, and it is where the most urgent attention is needed.
• Addressing the inconsistency in VED rates - an EV driver currently pays £200 per year in road tax, while the owner of a ten-year-old petrol car might pay £20. That disparity is hard to explain to a consumer considering switching.
• Simplifying the EV proposition overall - between VED, eVED, charging apps, subscription services, and varying tariffs, the cognitive load of going electric is already too high. Any new policy layer needs to reduce complexity, not add to it.

If public charging costs can be brought down meaningfully, the sting of 3p per mile becomes genuinely less significant. The total cost of EV ownership remains competitive with petrol. The messaging holds. But that work needs to come first.

I built an interactive calculator that lets you compare EV versus petrol running costs with eVED factored in — for personal drivers and fleet managers. Try it now - BEST ON DESKTOP

I disagreed with eVED on the podcast and I still do - but I want to be precise about what I disagree with.

I am not opposed to EV drivers contributing to road funding.

I am opposed to doing it now, in this way, without first addressing the structural barriers that make public charging expensive, confusing, and inaccessible.

The EV transition is not complete. It is not even close to complete.

Policies that add cost and complexity at this stage risk undermining years of work by manufacturers, charging operators, and marketers who have been building consumer confidence that this is a viable, affordable, and sensible choice.

We need to fix it. The consultation has closed. The policy is moving forward. So the question now is not whether eVED happens - it probably will - but how the industry responds.

That means clearer communication, better infrastructure investment, and a concerted effort to make the full picture of EV running costs legible to the people who are still on the fence.