Rissy wrote:zero "road tax" for electric vehicles will be temporary thing. It's ridiculous as it is. Wheels on the road irrespective of what drives those wheels and all that. Eventually when there is many many more electric vehicles on the road, and hardly any fossil fuel driven cars, you can bet your ass they'll add back a tax for electric vehicles. They'll also be able to detect when you're using your home electricity supply for domestic use, or for charging your vehicle, and they'll charge you different rates accordingly. This is one of the reasons for the beginnings of smarts meters in peoples houses. People will attempt to cheat that, but then they'll marry up the figures relating to miles done in a vehicle, and the times charged. Vehicles will also hold a record of where they've been charged from and for what level of charge. All the little nooks and crannies will be covered to find out the cheats. They'll get their money. That's one thing you can be sure of.
(apologies I know we're way of topic)
You're quite right, road tax will eventually move to include electric vehicles, they use and cause wear & tear to the road surface as much as any internal combustion vehicle (not that all road tax revenue just goes to the roads of course).
I just don't see how the government can re-coup the lost petrol tax revenues when people are charging at home and becoming more self sufficient with home energy storage solutions growing in popularity.
A local friend with his Tesla PowerWall and Solar array is pretty much off grid as far as electricity goes, he's techno geek rather than initially looking to save money, he bought his PowerWall installation a few years back when there weren't many other options. But he recently bought a BMW i3 so he's now pretty much self sufficient between home electricity generation and use, charging his car off the PowerWall and occasionally topping up at work.
Even if he paid £500-£1000+ per year road tax it would still be less than he would be contributing to the public finances through duty & VAT on traditional fuels over the course of a year, with even a moderate commute.
It's certainly going to be and interesting job for the chancellor in the future, no solution will fit all (not that it ever has).
J