EV Road Tax (VED) Guide

Electric cars were exempt from Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) — commonly called road tax — until 1 April 2025. Since then, EVs pay it just like any other car. It's still usually cheaper than petrol or diesel, but not free any more.

How it breaks down

• Year one: a new EV registered from April 2025 onwards pays a flat £10 — much less than the CO2-based first-year rate combustion cars pay.
• Year two onwards: EVs move to the standard rate that almost all cars pay, £200/year for 2026/27 (this rate rises slightly most years with inflation).
• The "expensive car" supplement: if the car's list price when new was over £50,000, an extra £440/year applies on top of the standard rate — £640/year in total — for five years starting in year two. From April 2026, this £50,000 threshold applies specifically to zero-emission vehicles (previously EVs used the same £40,000 threshold as petrol/diesel cars).
• Older EVs: cars first registered before April 2025 also lost their exemption and now pay the standard rate at their next renewal — there's no way to keep the old £0 rate.

How it compares to petrol and diesel

From year two, EVs pay the same flat £200 standard rate as almost every other car first registered from March 2001 onwards, regardless of fuel type — VED no longer gives EVs a special rate. The real difference is in year one: petrol and diesel cars are charged on a sliding scale by CO2 emissions (up to several hundred pounds for high-emission models), while EVs pay the flat £10 minimum. The £50,000 expensive-car supplement applies to any car over that price regardless of fuel type, but EVs get a slightly higher threshold (£50,000 vs £40,000 for petrol/diesel) from April 2026.

What's coming next

A separate pay-per-mile charge for electric cars (sometimes called eVED) is planned from April 2028, adding roughly 3p per mile on top of standard VED. It isn't in effect yet, and details could still change before then — worth knowing about, not something to plan around today.

Tax rates are set by the government and reviewed most years — always check the current rate for your specific car on GOV.UK before you tax it, rather than relying on figures from any article, including this one.