“With the way things are kicking off in the Middle East, you should fill up your car with petrol right now” my personal trainer advised me last month. “Oh, that’s not necessary in my case,” I replied casually, “I drive an electric vehicle”. This was the first time in a while that owning an EV had enabled me to feel smug (which, let’s face it, is one of the most compelling reasons for having one).
I got my Kia Niro electric four years ago. My wife at the time enthused about the incentives the government was offering to people to purchase EVs: free road tax, no congestion charge, free parking etc. I pointed out that all these benefits seemed attractive, but they would almost certainly be short term. She had fallen into the trap of thinking that taxation is about fairness: of rewarding virtuous behaviour and discouraging irresponsibility. The reality is that it’s simply about finding ways to relieve middle-class people of their money. As only such well-off individuals can afford to virtue-signal their green credentials by driving EVs, clearly these are people who need to be taxed, not to be handed tax breaks. The initial incentives were just a decoy: to lure us into purchasing EVs in the first place. The government had employed a similar ploy with diesel vehicles a few years previously.