HMRC EV Mileage Split Tracker (UK)
Every Business Mile, Fairly Claimed
Executive Summary
In a nutshell
A UK mobile app for company-car EV drivers and small fleets that GPS-logs every journey, automatically detects whether a charging session was at home (7p/mile HMRC rate) or public (15p/mile from 1 March 2026), ingests VAT receipts via OCR, and produces an HMRC-compliant reimbursement claim the driver can fire straight to payroll. It solves the "drivers out of pocket" gap created when HMRC split the Advisory Electricity Rate in September 2025 — a gap that can cost a frequent public-charger £800/year. The category is nascent, the incumbents (Driversnote, Tripcatcher, Octopus Electroverse) are adjacent but not HMRC-split-native, and every EV company-car driver in the UK now has the exact same paperwork headache every month.
The Story
Meet the user
Marcus is a regional sales manager in Leeds. He got a Polestar 2 on salary sacrifice last year and loved it — until month-end. Half his week is on the motorway, which means rapid chargers at 76p per kWh. He types every receipt into a spreadsheet, eyeballs his odometer, splits the mileage between home and Gridserve, and prays his finance team don't bounce the claim back. Last quarter he was £180 out of pocket because he couldn't prove which 400 miles came from home charging and which came from Moto services. His wife called it "a tax on being organised."
Then one Sunday he's scrolling r/ElectricVehiclesUK and someone mentions an app called ChargeClaim. It sits in the background, tags every charge session by location, OCRs the Gridserve VAT invoice he snaps from the forecourt, and spits out a one-click HMRC-compliant PDF. Marcus downloads it on the drive home. That month's claim takes ninety seconds.
Scores
How does this idea stack up?
7.2/10
UK EV fleet software growing 22.7% CAGR; ~90k new fleet EVs in 2025 and rising — plenty of buyers, fragmented competition.
Drivers quantifiably losing £500-800/year on the home/public gap; active forum complaints and HMRC rate-check searches.
Standard RN/Flutter + GPS + OCR + Stripe — 4-8 weeks solo; home/public detection is the only tricky bit.
HMRC split AER live since Sept 2025, refreshed 1 March 2026 — classic before/after moment legacy apps haven't fully adapted to.
Underlying reimbursement need is evergreen; split-rate framework is here to stay; incumbent absorption is the main downside risk.
Solo-buildable under £1k, but distribution into fleet managers is a longer sales cycle than pure consumer.
Strongest
Timing
There is a live, dated regulatory change that every incumbent HMRC mileage app has to scramble to handle cleanly.
Watch out
Effort to Build
Fleet B2B distribution is slower than consumer. The individual-driver consumer wedge is the quickest route to revenue.
Pain Point
The problem
“A Polestar 2 driver doing 6,000 business miles mostly on public charging could lose £800 a year under the current AER.”
— loveelectric, EV Charging Employee Reimbursement Guide
HMRC's Advisory Electricity Rate was a single number for years, which already left drivers short. From 1 September 2025 HMRC split it into 8p (home) and 14p (public); from 1 March 2026 it became 7p home / 15p public. That looks better on paper but three hard problems remain.
Proving the split: employers reimbursing above the AER must keep evidence of actual electricity cost per mile, otherwise the top-up is taxed as Class 1 NI pay. Drivers are expected to produce VAT-level evidence of which miles came from which charger — most can't. The public rapid gap: ultra-rapid chargers sit at 76p/kWh. A typical EV gets ~3 miles/kWh, so the real public cost is ~25p/mile. HMRC pays 15p. Every rapid-charged business mile is a 10p per-mile loss unless the driver assembles a provable VAT evidence pack — which is exactly what today's tools (spreadsheet + Zap-Map + paper receipts) don't deliver.
Receipt chasing: charging VAT invoices arrive as PDF emails, in-app downloads, and paper receipts, in half a dozen formats from half a dozen networks. Finance teams reject claims that aren't clean. SERP intent is clear: "hmrc electric car mileage rates" (390/mo), "electric car mileage rate" (590/mo), "hmrc fuel rates" (1,300/mo — most searchers now EV-relevant), "advisory fuel rates" (3,600/mo). Reddit threads rank on page 1 for both primary EV mileage queries, confirming community discussion exists but isn't being captured by a purpose-built tool.
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