Your comment completely disregards the existence of low-emission and EV vehicles. The article mentions that petrol cars registered after 2006 won't need to pay the emissions charge. That's cars that are 16! years old.
Those vehicles were implicit in the “laptop class” expression that I used, they’re some of the few who can afford them.
Don't forget that there was a big campaign to get people on diesel cars. Turns out the "science" was wrong again and now diesel cars registered before 2016 are not compliant.