If you've bought an electric car in the last few years or you've been quietly saving up for one, there's a change coming in 2028 that's already got people arguing on the internet, signing petitions, and rethinking their next move.
It's called pay-per-mile. And whether you think it's fair or a stitch-up seems to depend entirely on where you live and how far you drive.
Here's the thing worth understanding before the noise gets louder: it's not as scary as some headlines make out, but it's not nothing either. Let's walk through what's actually happening, what real owners are saying, and what it means if you're driving or thinking about driving electric.
From 1 April 2028, EV and plug-in hybrid drivers will start paying a new charge based on how many miles they drive. The government's calling it Electric Vehicle Excise Duty, or eVED. Most people are just calling it pay-per-mile.
The rates are:
That's on top of the standard road tax (VED) that EVs started paying in April 2025. So it's an extra cost, not a replacement.
For a typical driver doing around 8,500 miles a year, that works out at roughly £255 a year, or about £21 a month. Drive less and you'll pay less; drive a lot and it climbs. The rate is also set to rise each year in line with inflation from 2029 onwards.
Who does it hit? Cars only, for now. Electric vans, buses, motorbikes and HGVs are exempt at launch. If your EV is bought outright, leased, on a subscription, salary sacrifice or a company car, the tax applies.
Why's it happening? Money, basically. As drivers ditch petrol and diesel, the Treasury loses fuel duty, which is a pot worth over £25 billion a year. Ministers frame eVED as fairness: petrol drivers pay roughly £600 a year in fuel duty, so EV drivers should chip in something for the roads they use too. The 3p rate is pitched at about half what an equivalent petrol driver pays. The government confirmed the plans after a consultation that pulled in more than 5,000 responses.
One detail that surprised a lot of people is that there's no GPS tracking. No black box, no "spy in the sky." Mileage will be self-reported and checked against odometer readings (think MOT-style checks). You estimate your miles for the year, pay in advance, and settle up if you're over or under. The BBC broke down the confirmed details here.
The reaction split almost immediately, and it split along a fault line you can probably guess: rural vs urban.
The anger is real. Within days of the announcement, a petition to scrap the charge landed on the UK Parliament site started, by many accounts, by a frustrated owner venting online first. The argument that keeps coming up is "double taxation": EV drivers already pay VAT on the electricity they charge with, already pay standard road tax, and now this. For some high-mileage commuters, people reckon the extra could run to several hundred pounds a year.
The "postcode penalty" is the sharpest complaint. If you live in a city with decent public transport, 8,000 miles a year is easy. If you're in rural Wales, the Highlands or anywhere the nearest supermarket is a 20-minute drive, you rack up miles because you have no choice. Critics say a flat per-mile rate quietly punishes people for their address.
But plenty of people think it's fair. A good chunk of people have argued that taxing by distance is the fairest way to do it. Those who use the roads most pay the most, which is roughly how fuel duty already works. Some pointed out that with fuel duty revenue collapsing, something like this was always coming.
The one thing almost everyone agrees on? The self-reporting bit feels shaky. Trusting drivers to accurately declare their own mileage struck a lot of people as naïve. Whether it's watertight or a fiddle waiting to happen, we'll find out.
The opposition has accused the government of treating motorists "like a cash machine" — a line you'll be hearing a lot as 2028 gets closer.
And there's an early real-world signal: EV sales growth slowed to its weakest in two years in the run-up to the announcement, with the industry body warning it shouldn't take demand for granted. Leasing bosses have said much the same, that a new charge risks making people hesitate right when we want them switching.
Do I have to pay this now? No. It starts 1 April 2028. Nothing changes on your mileage before then.
How much will it cost me? Roughly 3p for every mile in a full EV. At 8,500 miles that's about £255 a year; at 15,000 miles it's around £450. Plug-in hybrids pay half the rate.
Is the government going to track my car with GPS? No. It's based on self-reported mileage and odometer checks, not location tracking.
Does it replace road tax? No, it's added to standard VED, which EVs already pay.
Are EVs still cheaper to run than petrol? For most people, yes. Even with eVED, home charging plus lower servicing costs generally keeps an EV cheaper to run than an equivalent petrol car. The gap just narrows a bit.
What about company car drivers? The company car tax perks (that low Benefit-in-Kind rate) are protected through to 2030, so EVs remain a strong salary sacrifice choice. eVED is a separate mileage cost your provider or employer will factor in.
Should I wait until 2028 to switch? Probably not worth waiting around. You'd give up years of cheaper running costs now to dodge a charge that's fairly modest for average mileage. More on that below.
Here's the honest version, because there's no point pretending a tax disappears.
By 2028, eVED will be a running cost of any electric car in the UK — bought, leased, PCP, salary sacrifice or subscription. Nobody escapes it entirely, and we're not going to tell you otherwise.
What changes is the hassle, and that's where the subscription model genuinely helps. With a Wagonex car subscription, road tax is already rolled into one monthly payment - you don't touch the DVLA, you don't get surprise bills. The whole point is that servicing, maintenance, roadside assistance and VED come bundled, so you just add fuel (or charge) and insurance. When a new mileage-based charge lands in a world of self-reporting and "true-up" payments, the all-inclusive approach is designed to absorb exactly that kind of admin headache.
There's also the mileage angle. Subscriptions and leases already work around a mileage package — you pick roughly how far you drive and pay accordingly. That's the same logic pay-per-mile runs on, so the mental shift is smaller than it sounds. If your driving changes, a short contract lets you swap to a smaller, cheaper EV — or a bigger one for a house move — without being locked in.
For families, the appeal is predictability: one payment, no depreciation worries, no wondering what your tax bill does next April. For business users and company car drivers, the low Benefit-in-Kind rates locked in to 2030 still make electric the smart choice, and eVED becomes a line your provider helps you plan for rather than a shock.
Balanced take: if you do enormous rural mileage, do the sums. eVED will bite harder for you, and that's true however you finance the car. But for most drivers, an EV still stacks up, and flexible access means you're never stuck with the wrong car when the rules shift again.
Pay-per-mile is coming, it's confirmed, and it's fair to feel a bit grumpy about it, especially if you switched to electric partly because it was cheap to tax.
But two things are true at once: it's a real new cost, and it's a fairly small one for average drivers who'll still save money running electric overall. The people who should actually run the numbers are the very high-mileage and rural drivers, because that's where 3p a mile adds up fastest.
Our advice? Don't panic-buy and don't panic-wait. Work out your real annual mileage, plug it into the 3p sum, and see where you land. If the appeal of going electric is dodging admin and nasty surprises, the case for flexible, all-inclusive access only gets stronger the more the tax rules move around — and they will keep moving.
Want to see what an EV actually costs you month to month, tax included? Browse electric cars on Wagonex.