At the moment, an electric car is a great thing to have! You get free electricity (from a network of rapid chargers), you get free road tax and you even get free travel into London’s congestion zone – where you can then park for free.

No charge to charge. Would electric cars be so popular if filling them with fuel was not free?

This isn’t very sensible as a long term measure. It will one day end.

The question is when, and to someone looking to step into the world of EVs, that question is very important. After all, it’d be a bit galling to buy an EV based on very favourable sums to find out that the running costs are about to take a leap upwards.

Now, to be honest, the government probably aren’t going to ramp up the road tax for cars that already exist, though they have done this in the past. You can’t really put it past them therefore. I must also concede that the hideous lack of rapid chargers here in rural mid-Wales mean that I wouldn’t get free electricity anyway – I’d have to charge at home at whatever that costs. A few quid per charge I imagine.

So, I’m hoping that this fear of new charges won’t actually impact my own EV desires. By far the biggest issue there is that I still can’t afford to buy one. Even worse, if I do find myself in a position to buy one, and I just might if plans for next year pan out as I hope, I might find myself having to choose between buying an EV and restoring my 2CV as even if I do manage to scrape enough money together for one of those activities, I certainly stand no chance of affording both.

It must be said though, one large part of the appeal for electric vehicles is that I could drive one from home to pretty much anywhere near the motorway network for almost zero pounds. If that incentive was removed, then certainly, some of the appeal of electric propulsion would disappear with it.