The point isn’t to stop folks from driving. The point was to stop them using highly polluting cars.
You can get a compliant car for as little as 1000 pounds. Virtually all gasoline powered cars after 2010 are compliant. It's not about stopping people driving altogether.
£10 a couple of times a week seems a pretty good deal if you're used to getting place by overground train & bus.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2021/mar/02...
It’s not a barrier to driving.
I don’t live in London though and generally don’t drive much either. When I visit people In London I either take the train or drive and pay the charge.
It is more expensive but for the amount I have to drive in London it’s fine for now.
Then again it's not like there are no buyers for the vehicles - my relative recently bought a 2012 diesel VW Golf from, apparently, a Londoner or someone who drives there frequently and didn't get that huge of a discount on it.
Sell the diesel, buy gasoline and enjoy not paying as much as you lost on the sale, only every year.
There is a very vocal opposition against those: big recent SUVs are compliant, but small old cars are not, which goes against how people perceive their respective emissions.
In general: - any EV or hybrid is OK - petrol cars are OK if they're not too old (depending on Euro rating of the engine, I also have a 22 yo compliant petrol car, though a car from the same year could be non-compliant if the engine has a lower Euro rating) - diesel cars need to be recent (in general equipped with DPF and other emission-control equipment that's become mandatory to pass more recent Euro-specs)
my sarcasm detector is malfunctioning today, but surely that was in jest.
If you can't afford a £500 car, you probably shouldn't be driving anyway.
"If you're not driving by the age of thirty, you've failed in life" was a quote I believe was attributed to Thatcher. She did some great stuff, but I'm not sure I agree with that one.