Mr. James Nix:

I emphasise Professor Daly’s point about comparative advantage. The comparative advantage for EVs will be supported by taxing the internal combustion engine and hybrid passenger vehicles first and with a lower threshold than might apply to EVs in future years. That change is quite urgent now. When we see that high fossil fuel figures remain and are continuing down to the car market, there is a case to act quickly.

The other point is the erosion of the tax base as the new fleet increasingly electrifies. Some form of tax will be needed to replace that loss of revenue as the fleet electrifies. That is why we are seeing increasing attention in France, Germany and other countries on weight taxation.

On the EV side, it is also about restraining that EV size growth for reasons of protecting the grid, wider safety issues and the need to keep resource consumption as reasonable and as low as possible.