TL;DR

The Centre for British Progress argues that autonomous vehicles should be taxed now, while there are too few owners to mount a political defence. It puts the eventual charge at roughly 88p per mile, worth £47bn a year by 2050, and frames it as the replacement for a fuel duty that electrification is quietly killing. Wayve, the British firm at the front of the industry, calls it a penalty on the country’s own innovators.

The fiscal hole

Fuel duty raises around £27bn annually and is on course to vanish. That is the unglamorous half of the argument, and the more durable one: the Treasury needs a per-mile revenue base whatever happens to driving jobs.

The timing argument is sharper. As the report puts it, “There is not yet a substantial constituency of AV owners who will resist a charge; once there is, taxing them becomes far harder.” Co-author David Lawrence draws the parallel with fuel duty itself, legislated in 1909 before mass motoring made it contentious. He also makes a point that will land in the Treasury rather than the Department for Transport: 30-year gilt yields respond to credible future revenue today, so a tax that collects nothing until the 2040s still buys fiscal headroom now.

Congestion and drivers

Two mechanisms drive the congestion case. Departmental forecasts already anticipate road mileage climbing 24% by 2050 under high automation. On top of that, nearly half the distance Waymo’s robotaxis cover in California is driven empty, because circling costs almost nothing once there is no driver on the clock and may undercut parking.

London alone licenses 121,000 private hire and taxi drivers, out of 417,000 across England, and the report expects the bulk of that work to become obsolete. The GMB says a levy on its own is insufficient. Simon Rush, who heads the union’s London drivers branch, said operators, TfL and ministers have all been asked for a redeployment and reskilling plan, and that “to date our questions have gone unanswered”.

Looking forward

Ministers have staked a growth narrative on this sector, and Wayve’s Sarah Gates puts the global prize at £700bn. London’s robotaxis launched only this month, with Waymo and Baidu circling behind Uber and Wayve. The window the report identifies is therefore real but short, and it closes the moment the first cohort of AV owners becomes large enough to lobby.