Tanya Sinclair, policy director UK & Ireland, at ChargePoint, says time is ticking for the Government on getting road pricing right – and that it must not impact progress on electrification. 

Tanya Sinclair, policy director UK & Ireland, at ChargePoint

Electric vehicles have finally come into their own. In October, sales of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in the UK were up 73% over the previous year, reaching 15% of all new car registrations.

That is good news for the health of the planet and its 7.8 billion people. With global road freight demand predicted to rise by nearly two-thirds by 2040, the electrification of transport will have an outsized impact on fleets, which are already preparing for the 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel vehicle sales. There’s broad consensus that, lacking the massive greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions necessary by the middle of the next decade, the world is facing a climate catastrophe. That’s why the current discussions surrounding road pricing are so vital.

Road pricing is a pay-per-mile scheme which will eventually replace the 58p per litre fuel duty (along with other motor taxes like Vehicle Excise Duty), a tax take which is decreasing rapidly due to our increasingly cleaner vehicle choices. Whilst plugging the projected £30bn government revenue shortfall by decade’s end is important, it must not come at the expense of electrification.

The key to getting this delicate balance right – fundamentally changing how we contribute to motor and road taxation whilst also ensuring drivers feel encouraged and incentivised to choose the cleanest vehicles – is a policy design challenge, but it’s also a communications’ one.

There are seemingly endless questions to answer about how road pricing is designed. Who pays most, whether charges are levied on distance travelled or emissions or a combination of both, whether urban and rural drivers should be treated differently, whether charges are sufficiently transparent that everyone understands the tax implications of the vehicles they choose. This is the central challenge the Government faces in this landmark re-design, and one that think tanks and MPs in the Transport Select Committee are actively considering.

But if we are going to successfully introduce road pricing it has to be accepted by motorists and businesses at large, and that requires clear and effective communications in addition to a well-thought-out policy. For that, we need to have a timely but challenging national conversation about how the Government can signpost to motorists that electric vehicles are still the cleanest private transport choice, without incentivising us with the wide range of grants and tax breaks that we have become accustomed to over the past decade.

The Government may look kindly on electric vehicles when road pricing is first introduced, but at the current buoyant rate of EV adoption, it is not possible for the era of ‘zero for zero’ – zero tax for zero emissions vehicles – to survive in the era of road pricing.

The impact of the Government getting policy design and its communications right goes beyond the motorist and the fleet operator. There are also dozens of companies that have entered the EV charging sector in recent years to consider, responsible for designing, manufacturing, installing, operating and maintaining the mushrooming estate of charging stations around the UK.

Mostly privately funded, these businesses are employing the workforce of the future today, including the highly skilled engineers and well-paid installers that will fuel an economy largely driven by the electrification of transport. These companies need clear direction from the Government to accurately forecast electric fuelling demand.

We are also at the forefront of deploying the best charging technology around the UK – given that it is vital in this growing market to make fuelling seamless for drivers. That means ensuring the availability and convenience of ad hoc payment methods for charging. Contactless functionality using either a mobile device, a card from a driver’s preferred charging network, a fleet fuelling card from WEX, or payments initiated from the vehicle’s in-dash infotainment system are already available and far less prone to abuse than requiring 20th century technology for 21st century fuelling.

The electric fuelling industry understands the importance of convenience and choice, which is why most major EV charging networks across Europe have already entered into roaming agreements, allowing drivers to charge at competitors’ stations using a single account. Interoperability between charging networks is fundamental to delivering a seamless — and superior — fuelling experience for fleets and drivers.

Time is ticking for the Government on getting road pricing right. Having committed to introducing a ZEV mandate which sets an annual percentage of electric vehicles to be sold in the UK, the Government can clearly forecast how many EVs will be on our roads into the 2020s and beyond. With a ZEV mandate combined with the eventual 2030 end of sale of petrol and diesel vehicles the Exchequer can calculate how to generate sustainable revenues from a new road pricing scheme compared with today’s rapidly shrinking receipts from Vehicle Excise Duty.

But if road pricing is not shown to be a vital, transparent and inevitable transition by the driver who has become accustomed to freebies for EVs, the momentum of EV adoption in the UK will directly suffer. Along with our Net Zero targets, urban air quality and ability to contribute to global climate change mitigation.