It has become obvious that electric cars are gaining more popularity in Great Britain. The amount of hybrids and electric cars appearing on the roads has been increased. This raise a concern of what will be the funding source for the road maintenance in case the ordinary cars with internal combustion engines are replaced by the electric ones.
At present, most of the funds for road maintenance come in the budget from the fuel tax (about 29 billion pounds). But electric cars do not use fuel, and hybrids use it much less than the cars with internal combustion engines.
In short, in the near future the fuel tax will be greatly reduced, and eventually it may disappear completely. So, the government will have to switch to another way of collecting taxes from drivers.
It is rather difficult to impose a tax on electricity used for charging cars, as it is difficult to calculate when an electric car like any other household appliances, was charged. So, the idea to calculate the amount of tax for each driver, based on the car annual mileage, seems to be appropriate.
Today, the most interesting option is to provide a privileged (free of charge) run of 4,800 km (3,000 miles) per year. If this limit is exceeded, the driver will be charged a fee for each additionally covered kilometer. The option of applying some special mileage tariffs for different types of vehicles, is also being considered. For example, drivers in rural areas will get more privileged kilometers. Taxi or truck drivers will also be given the tariffs, which will be different from the ones fixed for ordinary drivers.