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The City of London is scrapping the exemption from parking fees that electric cars have previously enjoyed, claiming that it has been too successful.
Owners of electric vehicles in London are currently exempt from both road tax and parking charing, representing a saving of up to £7000 a year.
Electric vehicle company Nice, is protesting against the end of the exemption, co-founder Julian Wilford claiming that “the City’s decision has nothing to do with improving the environment and everyt...Read the full article

And they're surprised? Perhaps they thought the idea of people actually driving a G-Wiz too ludicrous? ;) 

Incentives for electric vehicles? Dead before we've even begun to adopt them en-masse. LPG all over again? Like electric, once the saviour but now, according to the experts, 'no longer as green as we thought'.

Bureaucrats cannot resist fiddling with rules because they have nothing else to do. Fiddling is their sole purpose in life. They push us this way, and pull us that, without any long-term aim or strategy. They enjoy sailing holidays in rudderless boats, driving on ice, travel by hovercraft, blind mans bluff, pin the tail on the donkey, and blind dates.

Let's make a real difference to London's congestion. Cull the rule fiddlers and save thousands of wasted car journeys and the release of millions of litres of hot air every day. Now that would be a real step forward.

Oh I AM surprised. Too successful. Yeah, 'cos we're all driving around London in our zero emission electric cars aren't we? Yeah, everywhere I go in London I see zero emission cars clogging up the streets, silently running over pedestrians, parking all over the place for free, costing the councils millions of pounds a day they could be spending on buses or trains or free lunches or something.

Every time that there is actually a scheme in place that is actually good and actually encourages people to use cleaner, more efficient vehicles with incentives (rather than just penalising you into next week), it gets scrapped after five minutes when people actually start using it. I mean you may aswell offer free use of all public transport for life for anyone who's interested (that would certainly convey a good green message) only to scrap the idea as soon as the first person applies, claiming that after further exhaustive investigation they've developed an improved format of the system and in the grand scheme of things the average tax-payer will actually be better off by at least blahblah%. Big load of rubbish.

No surprise there then. As another subscriber mentions, like LPG, dead before it catches on. Anyone out there remember when diesel was much, much cheaper than petrol?

Diesel was never much, much cheaper than petrol. It was 'marginaly' cheaper than petrol, then then green issue caught on.

An issue fed by morons who still believe this is all about mere 'fuel'.

 

Again a symptom that the councils and central government do not a give a rat's rear-end about the environment and are only concerned with revenue. The private sector mentality has finally become all invasive. They do not give a fig about the inflationary pressure being put on the economy, the fact that there is no alternative for many people and if there was they would lose all the money they currently claim is to encourage people to make different choices. Furthermore, if their mind and the extortionate amount of money gathered from motorists was invested in finding solutions to the hydrogen generation and distribution problem, this green issues would be solved... But then they would have no tax revenue... Bunch of patronising ignorant gits that live on free travel and cars (remember 2 Jags?!)...

All parking should be free. What are we paying for ?

 Doesn't this all come down to the fact that the Government don't really want us to give up the car? 

I mean it's a huge cash cow for them.  And before anyone says I'm being biased against labour, I honestly don't think any party is going to do anything other than raise tax on fuel "to promote environmental awareness" or some such lie.

Stephen Guckel:

Diesel was never much, much cheaper than petrol. It was 'marginaly' cheaper than petrol, then then green issue caught on.

An issue fed by morons who still believe this is all about mere 'fuel'.

 

Sorry, but go back twenty years or more and the difference was not marginal. I would agree with you however that the issue has nothing to do with fuel, as always it's about money making.

Blame Boris?

Hurrah! Good old BJ has righted a wrong.

Why shouldn't they pay? They still occupy the road space.