Last week the UK Chancellor announced a new driving tax in the Budget. Introduced from April 2028, pay per mile / pay-as-you-drive / road charging (or whatever it is eventually officially called) will mean that electric vehicle [EV] drivers will have a charge of 3p per mile, while plug-in hybrid drivers will pay 1.5p per mile.
Further clarification subsequently from The Treasury is that mileage will be checked every year, potentially at the MOT test and integrated into the existing DVLA Vehicle Excise Duty (car tax) system. However, the government is now consulting on exactly how the scheme will work. As in many cases, this annual total (current mileage minus last year’s mileage)
Take for example the following scenarios:
- Person A
Leases a new electric car and returns it in 2 years (many company car schemes now allow staff to swap their vehicle every 24 months). Since the MOT test takes place when the vehicle is 3 years old and then annually… this person may never see an MOT tester. - Person B
Takes their hybrid vehicle out of the UK for a while – e.g. they live in Ireland and frequently drive between Northern Ireland and The Republic of Ireland. Meaning they only drive about 50% on UK roads - Person C
Buys a second-hand electric car a month before its MOT is due and which has done a high milage in the previous 11 months. - Person 4
Has their hybrid vehicle stolen and driven without their consent for a period of time. When it is eventually returned to them, it has a higher mileage. - Person 5
Scraps their electric vehicle mid-year
In each of these cases, it is likely that the owner (AKA the registered keeper) could be presented will an annual bill different to their actual usage of their vehicle or even no bill.
Plus, there’s the additional consideration that billing someone annually for all distance covered could present them with a large bill once a year – when currently the HMRC, TV licensing and even the DVLA themselves allow you to pay by smaller increments (e.g. monthly for your car tax).
However, we think that any UK-wide vehicle tracking and charging mechanism can be made more accurate and fairer by the introduction of a vehicle-based Smart Data sharing scheme.
How?
Well imagine the following…
- A centralised online service where a vehicle owner could register and associate themselves with their vehicle (s).
- A secure online account where they could easily view and / or save driving all data. E.g. journeys made, duration & time of day and maybe even the types of roads driven (motorways, a-roads, etc.)
- An online payment service, where users could pay regularly (e.g. monthly) or when they chose, plus even the ability to credit their account – in the say way that some people top-up phones or pre-pay for their travel using Account-Based-Ticketing [ABT] or Mobility-as-a-Service [MaaS] schemes.
(Perhaps paying for their car tax or even driving fines in the future?) - A way to consistently link this service with different accounts from other transport providers and modes of transport (e.g. rail, bus, metro, etc.) as well as potentially to their bank account via Open Banking (e.g. to associate driving with related fuel purchases, toll charges, previous payments, etc.).
- A data-driven recommendation engine that could suggest alternative & more fuel-efficient routes (for hybrids), different or cheaper modes and even more scenic drives in the future.
This may seem like some utopian technology dream, but this is all possible using Smart Data, agreed standards for interoperability and a common way to share specific transport data.
Such a scheme would need to be implemented over the next 2 or so years to meet the planned April 2028 introduction date. But doing this is not that difficult, as a lot of the functionality described above has already been designed & developed… by us.
Open Transport - Transport & Mobility Data Interoperability 