Electric car owners will now have to pay twice to drive abroad under Labour’s new pay-per-mile scheme

Electric vehicle (EV) drivers face paying double tolls while on holiday under Labour’s new pay-per-mile scheme.

Motorists using electric vehicles will also be required to arrange annual MOT-style checks for brand-new vehicles under plans announced by the Chancellor.

EV drivers will have to pay a tariff of 3p per mile from April 2028; This means a driver traveling 10,000 miles a year would face an additional annual bill of £300.

The government ruled out charging the tax based on when and where people drive, in a bid to ‘protect drivers’ privacy’; However, this means that kilometers traveled abroad will still be taxable.

So Brits going on holiday in their electric vehicles will effectively be charged double as they will face customs duties or tolls for driving on foreign roads.

A family driving to France will have to pay the new tax in addition to the ‘peage’ tolls on French highways; The 1,530-mile round trip from Calais to Nice will cost an extra £45.90.

This is likely to face backlash from motoring groups, who argue that taxing EV owners for using their green cars outside the UK is ‘unfair and a gross misdemeanor’.

AA chief Edmund King said he did not see ‘any practical way’ of avoiding charging mileage charges to electric vehicle owners overseas.

‘It would be quite bureaucratic to check your mileage in Dover and have it stamped on some sort of certificate saying you were leaving the country for two weeks,’ he explained.

‘There are already concerns about extra checks at the borders so I think this would be a nightmare. Looks like EV drivers will have to pay double taxation.’

Meanwhile, EV drivers will also have to ‘self-report’ their mileage and pay a fee based on that estimate, after the Government refused to install mileage tracking black boxes.

They will need to submit an estimate to the DVLA and pay the tax based on their actual mileage at the end of the year; An underestimation will require additional payment. For drivers with older EVs, their mileage will be checked at the annual inspection.

Current law states that brand new vehicles, both petrol and electric, do not require an MOT until they are three years old.

But a Treasury spokesman said new EVs would need to have ‘additional light-touch controls’ to record their mileage on the first and second anniversaries of purchase.

Motorists using electric vehicles will have to arrange annual MOT-style checks for brand-new vehicles under plans announced by the Chancellor

Officials have confirmed that owners’ self-reports in the years before new vehicles are inspected will be verified by an ‘accredited provider’, possibly an MOT centre.

The Treasury said that ‘no driver fee’ will be charged for the service. But officials could not say how many garages would be accredited or how far owners might have to travel to check their mileage.

The Treasury’s pay-per-mile advice accepts that mileage readings will be based on in-car odometers; these can be manipulated to reduce mileage (known as “clocking”).

He adds that the introduction of the tax ‘could increase the likelihood of drivers choosing to fit watches to their vehicles’ and says he is looking at ways to alleviate this – including using electric vehicles’ onboard computers, which would likely spark privacy fears.

Shadow transport secretary Richard Holden said: ‘As well as increasing fuel duty by 5p per litre, Rachel Reeves is also trying to introduce a half-baked extra driving tax full of loopholes.

‘Labour promised not to pay a tax per kilometre, then introduced a tax from 2028 and hoped no one would notice.

‘It was rushed, careless and nothing more than a raid on people working to pay for their social welfare.’