This has not been the best week for electric car owners, as the Chancellor outlined on Thursday how he will require drivers of zero-emission vehicles to pay road tax beginning in 2025.
However, while existing electric car owners may have to pay £165 per year in vehicle excise duty by the middle of the decade, some could save hundreds of pounds annually on charging expenses thanks to new technology being tested in the United Kingdom.
“Agile Streets” is a program that targets residential roads with no off-street parking. It then installs several intelligent metered devices that only charge electric vehicles when doing so is inexpensive.
An initial trial of the technology in the United Kingdom has concluded that it can lower the annual cost of charging via the public network by over £600.
Drivers residing in apartments and houses without parking spaces are unable to have a charging station installed at their residences.
This means that they cannot take advantage of cheaper domestic electricity and must instead rely on the more expensive public network, which can be over three times more expensive.
This is also somewhat of a postcode lottery, as evidenced by the disparity between the municipalities with the most and fewest electric vehicle charging stations.
However, Agile Streets intends to address this matter.
100 smart charging stations have been installed on residential roads at 17 locations in four local authorities: Shropshire, Hackney, Glasgow, and East Lothian.
The devices plan to charge at times when energy costs are lowest, such as overnight when demand is low or on sunny and windy days when an abundance of inexpensive solar and wind energy is produced.
One of the groups behind the initiative Connected Kerb claims that these devices can lower peak energy demand by as much as 240 megawatts, or the amount of energy required to boil over 1.4 million kettles.
This decreases emissions, relieves grid stress during peak hours, and keeps driver expenses down, according to Connected Kerb.
‘By utilizing the Agile Streets app and scheduling the time a vehicle needs to be fully charged, drivers will have sufficient power to leave when necessary.’
During the six-month study, 2,451 charging sessions consumed 51,618kWh of energy.
368 trial participants engaged in these charging sessions.
The smart charging ‘Eco’ mode costs 19p/kWh and allows drivers to schedule charging at the cheapest periods of the day. Alternatively, the ‘boost’ mode costs 33p/kWh and gives power quickly like a standard non-smart public charger.
Using Eco mode to charge an average 62kW Nissan Leaf from 20% to 100% results in savings of £6.95 each session, or a cost reduction of 42%.
This resulted in an annual savings of £604.65, compared to the current average cost of using a public device.
According to the research, this may result in annual savings of approximately £4.1 billion across the United Kingdom by 2030.
Chris Pateman-Jones, chief executive officer of Connected Kerb, stated, “Now is the moment to focus on smart charging technology that will allow individuals who rely on public charging infrastructure to take advantage of lower costs when electricity demand is at its lowest.”
“The implementation of smart charging in public charging stations is revolutionary since it reduces customer expenses and reduces the impact of charging on the grid.
The Agile Streets experiment provides us with the opportunity to guarantee that smart charging is implemented correctly, allowing us to take all of the trial’s lessons and prepare to implement this new infrastructure.
VED regulatory changes will cost EV drivers £169.5 million annually.
The technology will be well-received by owners of electric vehicles, especially in light of increased operating expenses towards the middle of the decade.
Forbes Advisor estimates that Jeremy Hunt’s statement last week in the Autumn Statement that EV drivers will begin paying VED in 2025 will cost motorists at least £80 million per year, and maybe as much as £169.5 million.
If Britain’s 550,000 fully-electric vehicles are taxed at the same rates as gasoline and diesel automobiles – £165 per year for the regular rate of Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) for all models registered after April 1, 2017 – it will cost their owners £89.5 million per year.
The VED addition of £355 for all cars over £40,000, which is paid for five years on top of the ordinary rate, will also raise large revenue for the Treasury, while severely impacting the finances of drivers making the switch to greener vehicles.
According to research by Forbes Advisor, there are at least 226,000 fully-electric cars on the road with a list price of more than £40,000. This equates to more than £80 million per year in VED premium tax or over £400 million over the five-year charge term.
Combined with the maximum rate of £165 for road tax, owners of fully-electric vehicles in the UK might incur an additional annual cost of £169.5 million.
Kevin Pratt, a representative for car insurance at Forbes Advisor, stated, “Expanding the VED net to cover electric vehicles is a natural step for a revenue-hungry administration, even if it will come as a surprise to impacted drivers.”
However, he qualifies: ‘It is an unexpected decision to target automobiles already on the road, as well as those purchased since 2017’ It remains to be seen if recent positive trends in EV sales will continue now that customers are aware that the entire amount of road tax will soon be implemented.
