When the Chancellor stood up yesterday, most people in automotive already knew a version of this announcement was coming. From 2028, fully electric cars in the UK will pay 3p per mile, and plug in hybrids 1.5p per mile, on top of Vehicle Excise Duty.
On paper, that looks like a neat policy fix for a Treasury facing a slow puncture in fuel duty receipts. In the real world, it lands in your showroom, your contact centre and your social comments right now.
Customers are not interested in Office for Budget Responsibility charts. They will ask a much simpler question:
"With this new charge, is an EV still worth it for me?”
If we do not have a clear, confident answer at brand and retailer level, we risk creating a vacuum that will be filled by headlines, half truths and fear.
So what does 3p a mile really mean for EV marketing in 2026, especially in retailer conversations, and how should we respond?
First, the facts.
From 2028, EVs pay 3p per mile, PHEVs pay 1.5p per mile, collected on top of VED. Vans, buses and HGVs are excluded for now.
Fuel duty on petrol and diesel stays frozen at 52.95p per litre, including the temporary 5p cut, until September 2026, after which the cut will be unwound.
From April 2027, fuel duty is due to rise annually in line with inflation.
So yes, we are moving from a world where EV drivers paid no fuel duty, to one where they pay a dedicated road charge, but in line with that ICE drivers will see pump taxes start to climb again in cash terms.
That matters for total cost of ownership. It also matters for trust.
For a customer ordering a car in 2026 on a three or four year cycle, 2028 is not “a long way off”, it is within the life of the car. Telling them “do not worry about it” is not a serious answer.
We have to grow up the EV value story
The lazy version of EV marketing was always “cheap to run, tax friendly, job done”.
That is not good enough now, and arguably it never was.
In 2026 we need to move to a more grown up value story that does three things:
1: Puts numbers against 3p a mile for real customers
Not just an abstract national average, but:
The output is a simple, visual comparison between EV, PHEV and ICE over the ownership period.
2: Acknowledges that ICE will get more expensive again
Fuel duty has been effectively frozen for over a decade. The Budget keeps that in place until September 2026, then switches to inflation linked increases from 2027. That means petrol and diesel miles are also on a path to become more expensive in nominal terms, even if the step changes are smaller and spread out.
3: Talks about value, not just cost
Company car drivers, salary sacrifice users and many private buyers are weighing up the whole cost of ownership package, not just the next month’s electricity bill.
The point is not to pretend the 3p a mile charge does not matter. It clearly does. The point is to be seen as the adult in the room who can explain the whole picture, EV and ICE, in plain English.
What real EV drivers actually value, and why we barely use it
A lot of the commentary around EV buyers assumes they were mainly motivated by tax breaks, and that may have been true for some early adopters. But if you actually listen to EV drivers, a different picture emerges.
The Global EV Driver Survey, which spoke to more than 23,000 EV owners in 18 countries, found that:
• The top reasons for going electric were lower running costs, environmental benefits and the lack of engine noise.
• 92 per cent said they plan to choose another zero emission EV next time.
•. Only around 1 per cent said they would go back to a petrol or diesel car.
Closer to home, UK based research highlights a few under used themes:
Surveys of UK EV owners regularly find that once people have home charging, they do not want to give it up. In one independent survey of 2,800 EV drivers, most said they could not live without home charging, and more than half found it difficult to rely only on public chargers.
For many, the big lifestyle shift is not never going to petrol stations, it is never thinking about petrol stations.
That is a huge emotional and practical benefit we rarely build into local creative or test drive experiences.
Drivers consistently talk about the quiet cabin, smooth response and instant acceleration as the things they would miss most if they went back to ICE.
These are feelings that work brilliantly in local content and events: city drives that feel calmer, motorway trips that feel less tiring, rural drives that feel lighter and more responsive.
EVs have fewer moving parts, no oil changes and less brake wear thanks to regeneration. Studies suggest they are roughly 30 per cent cheaper to service over five years on like for like comparisons, and broader analyses put lifetime maintenance costs around 50 per cent lower than for petrol cars.
That is a powerful story for aftersales departments and used EV buyers as well as new car marketing.
Both global and UK surveys show very high satisfaction. EVA England’s 2024 charging survey reported that around nine in ten EV drivers had no intention of returning to petrol or diesel, despite frustrations with public charging.
So while the tax landscape is changing, the core experience that real drivers value has not. We simply have not been telling that story in a rounded way.
So what do we actually do with this as marketers, especially if we care about the local reality in real dealerships, not just national messaging?
I would focus on three practical areas.
A. Build tools, not just talking points
Front line teams need more than a briefing email.
Customer facing calculators on brand and group websites that include 3p a mile and 1.5p a mile, with presets for common driving patterns.
In showrooms and contact centres, quick tools that allow a salesperson to plug in a customer’s mileage and charging behaviour and show clear comparisons between EV, PHEV and ICE.
Simple visual leave behinds that capture the key numbers and non financial benefits in one place.
The aim is not to hard sell an EV to everyone. It is to be able to say, “Here is the full picture for you” and mean it.
B. Join up national and local messaging
If the national EV campaign still implies “cheap to run, tax break, job done” while your local teams are firefighting questions about 3p a mile, the dissonance will be obvious.
Align on a shared narrative that covers cost, convenience, drive experience and servicing, not just one dimension.
Make sure local social, email and outdoor executions pick up the same themes in local language, not just re run national creative with a Dealer logo.
This is exactly where multi location brands often fall over. The Budget gives us a reason to fix it.
C. Use AI to support consistent, confident conversations
AI is ideal for the “explain and personalise” layer of this challenge:
Turning dense Budget detail into role specific internal explainers for sales, fleet and aftersales.
Auto drafting local emails, social posts and web copy from national assets, updated with the new tax facts and the real world EV benefits owners talk about.
Powering chat journeys that can handle “what does 3p a mile mean for me?” consistently, before handing off to a person where needed.
The goal is not to hide behind bots, it is to free people up to be human, while keeping the story straight.
A closing thought
3p a mile was always coming in some form. The detail matters, but the bigger risk for our industry is that we let that one number dominate the entire story.
If we focus purely on the tax, we invite a narrow, negative debate.
If we step back and combine:
• a grown up cost conversation that includes 3p a mile and the direction of travel for fuel duty,
• with everything real EV drivers tell us they value and do not want to give up,
• then 3p a mile becomes one factor in a broader, honest value exchange.
The tax lands in 2028.
The EV story gets rewritten now.
How ready are your brand and your Retailers to have that conversation?