If you’ve been putting off thinking about electric car road tax because you assumed EVs were still exempt, here’s the update you need: the exemption ended on 1 April 2025. From that date, all zero-emission vehicles started paying Vehicle Excise Duty (VED). A year on from that change, it’s worth being clear on exactly what you’re paying, what changed again in April 2026, and how it all adds up.

The Standard Rate: £200 a Year

For the majority of EV owners, road tax now costs £200 per year. That’s the standard annual rate for zero-emission cars, the same flat rate that applies regardless of the age of your vehicle once it’s past its first registration year.

To give that some context: a modern petrol car with CO2 emissions of around 120g/km typically costs around £195–£220 a year in VED. EVs are no longer the tax-free outliers they were — they’re paying roughly the same as a mid-range petrol car.

New Registrations from April 2026

The rate structure changed slightly for cars registered from 1 April 2026 onwards. New zero-emission cars now pay a reduced first-year rate of £10, then switch to the standard £200 from the second year onward. So if you buy a new electric car today, you’re looking at a £10 VED charge in year one and £200 per year after that.

This first-year discount acknowledges that EVs produce no tailpipe emissions even if the government decided they should contribute to road funding via VED.

The Expensive Car Supplement: Watch Your List Price

This is where things get more complicated, and where the April 2026 changes actually benefited EV buyers.

The expensive car supplement (sometimes called the luxury car tax) applies to new cars with a list price over a certain threshold. For several years, that threshold was £40,000, applying an additional £440 per year on top of standard VED for years two through six of ownership. At £640 a year, that’s a meaningful addition to running costs.

The problem was that a lot of electric cars — particularly family SUVs and premium saloons — landed above £40,000 as list prices. Buyers were getting hit with the supplement even when choosing relatively mainstream EVs.

In November 2025, the government raised the expensive car supplement threshold specifically for zero-emission vehicles to £50,000. From April 2026, that higher threshold is now fully in effect. So an electric car with a list price between £40,000 and £49,999 no longer attracts the supplement.

If your EV’s list price is £50,000 or more, you’re still paying the supplement: £440 per year from year two to year six, making the total £640 annually for that five-year window.

What About Older EVs?

Electric cars first registered between 1 April 2017 and 31 March 2025 — so any EV bought during the period when they were free — now pay the standard £200 annual rate.

Cars registered before 1 April 2017 have a slightly different calculation based on CO2 band at the time of registration. For those genuine early EVs, a small annual charge applies, typically around £20 depending on the exact registration date and weight category.

How This Affects Your Running Costs Calculation

The end of free VED doesn’t change the fundamental economics of EV ownership — electricity is still substantially cheaper than petrol per mile, servicing costs are lower, and for many drivers the total cost of ownership still comes out favourably. But it does mean road tax needs to go back into the calculation if you were previously treating it as zero.

A practical example: if you currently pay £200 a year for road tax on a petrol car and you’re comparing against an equivalent EV, the road tax cost is now effectively the same. The saving has shifted entirely to fuel costs, not road tax.

For company car drivers, EV Benefit in Kind tax remains considerably lower than petrol equivalents — 3% for zero-emission cars in 2026, rising incrementally — so the tax efficiency argument for EVs through salary sacrifice or company car schemes remains very much alive.

Fair Enough, Actually

The original exemption made sense as an incentive to accelerate EV adoption. With EVs now making up a significant proportion of new car sales, sustaining a blanket exemption becomes harder to justify in public finance terms — and fuel duty revenue is declining as the fleet electrifies, so government needed to find the replacement.

The £50,000 threshold adjustment for the expensive car supplement was a sensible recognition that the old £40,000 limit was catching too many ordinary family-sized electric cars. Whether £50,000 is the right cut-off is debatable, but it’s a better position than before.

If you’re buying an EV and haven’t accounted for £200 a year in road tax, add it to your total running cost estimate now. For most people, it doesn’t change the decision — but it belongs in the numbers.