Budget 2025 – Drivers BETRAYED: EV Pay-Per-Mile, PHEV Tax & Fuel Duty Trap Exposed!
budget 2025. Yeah, that just happened. Wasn’t that a barrel of laughs? Oh my goodness. Wow. If you were expecting bad news, uh then you weren’t disappointed. Let’s be absolutely honest. And my god, this is I mean, to be honest, it’s buried under the headlines. The main story for us motorists and the car community is the one that’s actually got buried under all of the other headlines, all of the other bad news. And this little bit of bad news is actually I think for motoring and automotive and the car industry and the car community is probably the most epole thing to be announced in the budget and it is what I predicted in my book the ULES files. I predicted in 2026 there would be an announcement for payper mile and uh okay I’m a couple of months early but here we are at the end of 2025 and there is an announcement in the budget confirmed pay per mile is a thing now. It is a real thing. It is guy [Music] thing. It is happening. It’s coming in not straight away. Thankfully, you’ve got a little bit of a a breeding space. It comes in in 2028. And previously, I did talk about this and I mentioned that it would be only applicable to EVs, electric cars. Not so because I always warned I said you know I mean yeah okay you may all the people that don’t have EVs be like yeah good yeah EV people they deserve it they should get it I have to be honest right I’ve been reviewing a couple of EVs recently and honestly and even this is a plugin that I’m in right now it’s a plug-in Toyota CHR and the reality is that like unless you can plug in at home then you are paying a lot in fact I say that actually from my experience so far that the same sort of miles that I would have done in a nice car compared to the same sort of miles I’ve done in an EV and had to charge the EV three times and spend about 70 quid. Actually, that’s costing a lot more. And of course, because of all the tax that is on the energy when you when you charge, you know, at an outside public charger. The only benefit that you have and which is why there’s no point when this I did also another video recently about the fact that plug-in hybrids are found to be emitting a lot more than they should do. Um, because they’re supposed to be really low rate, but that’s if you use them properly. And by using them properly, I mean that, you know, you have to plug them in. Now you may be going why doesn’t he get to the interesting information about the budget here. I have put up a couple of short videos that actually have told you everything about the budget. So if you just want that that’s there. This is more a commentary on what’s happening. But anyway, back to the the whole thing about EVs. It isn’t cheap unless you can plug them in at home. And again, if you have a plugin, you should only buy a plug-in hybrid if you’ve got a smart charger at home. That’s the only reason you should buy it. If you don’t have it, don’t buy it because there’s no you will never charge it in public. you will never charge it because it’s expensive and also it’s only this this one in particular has only got the round connector so you have to fiddle around with the connectors and stuff like that and it’s expensive and you’ll only get 10 20 30 40 m at max which will go quick pretty quickly once you start using it. So there’s just no benefit whatsoever in buying a plug-in hybrid unless you can charge at home. If you can charge a home, definitely go for it because it will hardly cost you anything and you’ll probably get half a day’s motoring out of it with zero cost. You know that depending on your daily average mileage, which for most people actually is 30 mi. So in that case, it makes sense. So what they’ve done now, like I said, it’s not just EVs. The pay per mile that they have announced in 2028, they have muted it at 3 p per mile. 3 p per mile. You do the sum how many miles you do in a year, right? You do the sums, work it out. But you’re talking about, you know, several hundred pounds over the course of a year. Keep in mind, this is on top of any VED that you pay. So this isn’t replacing VED. This is on top of VED. So obviously they’re going, well, how does that differ from internal combustion engine cars? Well, because obviously you pay for paper mile tax, I guess, in a sense when you fuel the car. So we put fuel in them and therefore we pay. Now, where that doesn’t quite fit and and what they’ve done now, which is what I wasn’t expecting or wasn’t expecting it this soon, but it’s already been announced, is that in addition to EVs, paper mile is also going to hit these plug-in hybrids, PHEVs. It’s also going to hit these. The rate is going to be less. It’s going to be 1 P one, sorry, 1 and a half pence per mile. And again, forget all these rates because you know like you remember when the congestion charger was introduced and it was 5 quid and how much is it now? They will go up very very rapidly you know 5 3 p 5 5 p 10 p 20 p 50 p a pound a mile you know where will it end but it will be introduced 3 p a mile on EVs and 1 12 p a mile on plugin hybrids. That’s despite the fact that you’re putting fuel into your plug-in hybrids as well already. So you’re already paying tax on that. And again, like I said, it’s on top of the VED. So, you’re still paying your road tax, your VED. So, you’re hitting being hit with multiple costs, which is really going to hurt the car industry a lot. I mean, plug-in hybrids at the moment seem to be the optimal solution, really the best, you know, stop gap intermediary solution, but they’re going to be hit hard by this. They really are. And the the car industry, which is already really struggling with the ZV mandate, where it’s struggling to hit those percentage of sales, this is not going to help at all. In fact, the um what is it? The office of statistics or whatever the OBR as they call it. I’ll put the description on the screen. Um uh what is it? Official bureau whatever. Anyway, OBR they have already crunched the numbers and what they have worked out. They’re saying that this will result in 440,000 fewer fewer EVs estimated to be on the road by 2031. Don’t forget 2030 is a deadline when the uh when you can no longer sell internal combustion engine cars new apart from some hybrids. So they they probably worked out like how many cars they were expecting to see electric. So based on the fact that how many people are going to convert and move over to electric and how that growth is going to continue also probably based on the ZV mandate and the requirements for that actually X percentage per year of sales have to be EVs otherwise you get hit with penalties. Turns out that no, 440,000 nearly half a million cars less will end up on the road. And who is that going to hurt? The car industry. And what did I cover in another video recently about how just the glitch the JLR had when a hacker basically stopped their production for for a period of 5 weeks plus and what an impact that had on the growth the economic growth of the entire country you know on the entire country that’s one industry one company and one industry shutting down for 5 weeks and the impact that has on the entire econom e economic activity of the country and you put it in that context and you go right you’re going to lose half a million sales of course those half a million weren’t all coming from the UK but that’s still a trade that’s still an industry that’s still reported ahead thank you very much you know so this this is of major major concern to the car industry not just to the car community but also to the car industry which is already struggling so that’s one thing that’s happening so just to recap paper mile is confirmed and you know as as I always said I always predicted it would come and always warned against it but it’s coming now and you know it’s a slippery slope because once they’ve introduced it oh by the way they haven’t said how it’s going to work so there isn’t any information I can find on how it’s going to work whether it’s going to look at your mileage on anote or whether you know going to put transponders in the car or whatever I don’t know but but the fact is that most EVs and even PHVs are fully you know computerized engine management system everything is being logged anyway it won’t be too hard anyway so that’s that ppm paper mile is happening Um, what else have they done? They, the good news is they’ve frozen the fuel duty increases. They’ve still frozen those, but only until September next year. So, you’ve got less than a year to enjoy that. And after that, you can be sure that that is going up, too. Another thing that they’ve done is that luxury car tax, you know, that people say, “Wow, you know, especially with EVs, it’s such a big problem because they all tend to be over 40 grand and that’s when you get hit with that extra tax.” Well, they’ve now raised the threshold to 50 50k, £50,000 only on EVs, though. That’s only for EVs. They raised it to £50,000. So, that’s the case. Of course, prices are creeping up. So, actually, it feels like even 50 as a luxury cortex is actually not that high when you consider the prices of many cars out there, including EVs. So, that’s the other thing they done. And the other thing that’s happened also is the motability. So this is where, you know, people that need with special needs can buy cars on the Motability scheme. They’ve taken all the luxury cars off there. So the BMWs, the Mercedes, the Audi, they’ve taken all of those cars off there. So they’re like, “Buy cheap you guys. Why are you buying expensive cars?” Well, maybe because they want to. Maybe because they like driving BMW. Oh, you can’t have one. Go buy a Vauxhall. Go buy a DIA. Who wants that? You do, cuz that’s all you can have. It’s a bit mean, quite frankly. That’s quite mean. I mean, I don’t even see why they’ve done that. I don’t even see what the point is of that. You know, at the end of the day, there’s still sales. There’s still fleet sales. It’s still driving an industry forward and and it allows people to drive the car of their choice. So, what’s the problem? I don’t see it. But anyway, that’s what they’ve done. Hi guys. If you’re enjoying this video, finding it useful, and don’t forget to hit that like button and share and comment if you can as well. And support independent journalism channels like mine. You can do that at patreon.com, coffee.com, or right here on YouTube. we can take out a voluntary subscription or you know what you can buy my books. I’ve got three out at the moment. One is a fantastic thriller. It’s a novel. It’s called the Ulles Files. Go check it out about the war on cars. And I’ve got a collection of s short stories uh that’s called quantum races and that’s out at the moment. And then this year I put out how to be an automotive content creator. It’s about how to do what I do. And that’s all of these are now available on Amazon. If you buy any of those books, I will be very very grateful. If you buy all three, I’ll put you into a draw to win a unique and exclusive set keyring and brown car guy badge. Um, there are only 17 of these left. There were only 2. Three have gone out. There’s just 17 left now. So, hurry up with that. Anyway, now back to the video. So, that’s everything there. Of course, there’s some other stuff that’s, you know, not so important stuff about helping the car industry. Ironically enough, yes, I’m sure you are. you know, this is basically, you know, you’re helping you’re helping with one hand and then pulling the rug out with the other hand. That’s what you’re doing right now. So, anyway, that’s all the real news. And like I said, the biggest biggest story here, which again is not going to be talked about mainstream because there’s too many other things to talk about in this bad news budget 2025. But that is a big big this is a big wallet for car people. I’m telling you, I cannot overstate how significant this is. The advent of paper mile because this restricts your freedom to drive where and when and how much you choose. So much for just, you know, those drives when you just go out to clear your head or whatever because that’s going to cost you money now and at some point you’re going to be going, why is it cheaper to go to a therapist or is it cheaper to go for a drive? It might be cheaper to go to a therapist. Oh my god. While this is happening, let me hear your thoughts. I’m sure I will. I look forward to reading your comments and um you know, if we’re still all here, then I’ll probably catch you again soon in the next video. If I can be driving a car around and paying all this money, I’ll forget about it. Whatever. Shout out time, guys. Thank you so much. Hey, if you enjoy my content, why not get involved? Buy me a coffee. You can do that. Either of these links or if you’re watching on YouTube, buy me a thanks or take out a membership. It all helps. It really does.
They said this Budget would be tough… they didn’t say it would punish motorists. We knew it would though. And now the truth is out.
Budget 2025 has just dropped the biggest motoring bombshell in years:
Pay-Per-Mile is officially coming to the UK, and it doesn’t just hit electric cars.
Plug-in hybrids have been dragged into the tax net too.
In this video, I break down everything the Chancellor buried under the headlines — the pay-per-mile rates, how it works, the fuel-duty freeze trap, the rising luxury-car tax threshold, the shock Motability cuts, and the devastating OBR forecast showing the UK will have 440,000 fewer EVs by 2031 because of these policies.
This isn’t just a tax change.
It’s a direct hit on motorists, car buyers, the automotive industry and the freedom to drive itself.
📌 What I cover in this video
EV Pay-Per-Mile confirmed at 3p per mile from 2028
PHEVs hit too at 1.5p per mile
This tax is on top of VED, not replacing it
Fuel duty frozen only until September 2026
Luxury Car Tax (Expensive Vehicle Supplement) threshold for EVs rises to £50,000
Premium brands removed from the Motability scheme
OBR predicts 440,000 fewer EVs on UK roads by 2031
Likely damage to UK manufacturers, dealers, and ZEV mandate targets
Why this Budget may slow EV adoption and raise running costs for millions
The real impact on ordinary drivers — EV, hybrid and petrol/diesel alike
📈 Why this matters
With the ZEV mandate already squeezing carmakers, and EV sales slowing, the Government has introduced a tax that risks collapsing confidence right when the market needs stability.
PHEVs — seen as the sensible middle-ground — are now being taxed at the point of use.
And internal-combustion drivers get only temporary relief before fuel duty is expected to rise again.
The Budget calls it “fairness”.
Motorists will call it what it is: a triple squeeze.
📣 Join the discussion
What do you think?
Is this the moment drivers finally snap?
Does Pay-Per-Mile put you off EVs, hybrids — or driving altogether?
Drop your thoughts below. I’ll read every comment.
Chapters
1:05 Pay-Per-Mile – for EVs AND Plug-in Hybrids!
7:55 Fuel duty increase frozen till Sep 2026
8:43 Motability – Luxury Brands Removed
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