I have an ICE and don't feel like I'm being punished? It's exactly the same as it's always been. If anything, we're still benefitting from ridiculous subsidies and driving an ICE should be a lot more expensive than it is.

The reason for the EV nudging is it's a chicken and egg problem. The government doesn't want to run a national charging network themselves for obvious reasons, but private investors don't want to build it out either until it can make money.

So they've been trying to fix it from both sides, both by incentivising EV ownership and encouraging EV charging infrastructure. They're also trying to make charging at home easier, even if you don't have a driveway, by installing those little channels you can run the cable through.

Yes, the government are putting their finger on the scale in favour of EVs. Nobody's pretending they aren't. If combustion taxes were as high as they need to be to account for the externalities, the economy would collapse, but we need to get off ICEs for myriad reasons. Seems like they're doing a pretty good job overall and the main problem is just our high electricity price.

Far from ULEZ/CAZ areas I guess?