Following the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement last week, we ran a flash poll asking our community: What do you think about Electric Vehicles paying the same Vehicle Excise Duty as Internal Combustion Engine vehicles from 2025?

We had over 100 votes in the three-day period, with 58.3% of responses saying “Yep, Makes sense, Fair enough!” and 41.7% saying “Nope, Disapprove, Not for me!”.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to comment/vote!

Here is a selection of comments from our community:

John Minshall from Staffordshire Premier Travel “For now, EVs should be FREE of VED/road tax, and there should be even more incentives to encourage the switchover from ICEs. In my opinion, our Government has ‘talked the game’, but failed to deliver on the transition, infrastructure and incentives to engage the public in buying electric. Whilst the amount of electric VED might be negligible, for me it’s the message it sends out… ultimately (probably post-2030) we’ll all end up paying a mileage tax, irrespective of what powers your vehicle, and then VED/road tax will be as it’s beginning to be now. Irrelevant and out of sync with what it’s trying to achieve!”

Joel Teague from Co-Charger “I’m another “neither”. Yes, we should pay – but why should I pay the same as someone causing climate change and health problems costing the UK taxpayer hundreds of billions?”

Daryl Sharp from Ohme “Surely now was the time to help reinforce the common goal of 2030 and have a sliding scale over the next 7 years. While have a similar increasing scale on ICE. Therefore, still encouraging the changeover but recovering some of the loses from less ICE vehicles from the increasing electric vehicles. It could never stay free for ever, but 2 years seems a bit soon.”

John Curtis from The EV Café “It’s not a massive disincentive IMHO BUT it does show that petrol and diesel drivers have had no increase in tax burden in this autumn statement, which seems a little biased and not in the spirit of the net zero commitments made by the PM at COP27. Inconsistency in government? Who’d have thunk?!”