I shouldn’t feel too sorry. The congestion charge has its 21st Birthday in a few weeks, and ULEZ in central London has been in place nearly 5 years. The extra £12.50 will be lost in the noise for most.
Indeed, and whilst there's always going to be some willing to pay the £12.50 over time that number is going to fall - just as the number of older cars which meet the requirements rises.
Whilst it may not be viable for an individual to replace their car now, there's a good chance within the next 5 years that it would be, whilst they may not be for an EV it's likely that it'll be for something better.
Even if they don't, a further 5 years later and there's a good chance they those that haven't will do (especially if their car is already 5 years old).
Currently new sales of PHEV and BEV account for nearly 25% of total market share and growing year on year. Whilst there was an increase in the number of petrol cars in the last month and last year compared with the same data assets last year, there was still a fall in market share of around 2%.
Diesel is falling fast, last year it was about 85% of the number of PHEV and 38% of BEV, whilst it's now 55% of PHEV and 24% of BEV. 5 years ago diesel was 40% of all car sales and "alternative fuels" was 6% (i.e. there was no need to define BEV and PHEV separately as the numbers were just too small).
Currently there's a lot of opposition to increasing fuel duty, as it impacts a lot of people. However as market share values shift that opposition will start to fall. Even PHEV will be less impacted by increases.
Currently if petrol increases by 1p per mile a pure petrol car doing 10,000 miles a year will see the costs increase by £100. However if you can do 50% of your milage by electric in a PHEV then that extra cost of 1p per mile would see an increase of £50 (still painful, but less so).
However, given that:
- 10,000 miles a year is above average mileage
- 10,000 miles a year is 43 miles per working day (assuming only used for work purposes)
- most PHEV can do over 30 miles on pure electric
- PHEV will do more miles than this from recovered electricity
it's highly likely that the percentage of miles able to be done on electric (by the vast majority of people) would be quite a lot higher than this. Assuming 43 miles per working day and 30 miles of pure electric use and that's 70% (now that increase in cost is £30). The reality is likely that the car would be used at weekends, which would most likely increase the percentage of electric miles higher.
If we assume 15p per mile when fuel costs are when petrol is 150p per litre; then for fuel duty to increase costs by 1p per mile that's an extra 10p per litre - which would be a few years worth of growth of fuel duty (assuming a few pence per year). Whilst an extra £3 per year would soon start to be felt, an extra £1 per year wouldn't impact people nearly as much.
Whilst for those with BEV the impact would be zero.
At 10% (PHEV and BEV) of total fleet there's likely to be a willingness to start to see fuel duty rises of a penny per year every few years, as that rises to 25% of total fleet that's likely to stay to become every year with some years of a bit more than that, at 50% it's likely to become 3p plus every year and by the time it's over 70% it's likely that fuel duty will be seen as an easy target (similar to taxes on cigarettes).
Currently we are at just over 3% of total fleet being BEV or PHEV (having risen from about 2% in the last year), as such 10% total fleet could be as soon as 3 years out but fairly likely within 5 years, with 25% being 5 to 7 years time. Bear in mind EV/PHEV were sub 6% of new sales 5 years ago and they are now 25% of new sales, total fleet rising from 3% to 25% might be pushing it for within 5 years, but probably not all that far off.
