Commuters in London face another two days of disruption as a second 24-hour tube strike starts from midday on Thursday.

No further talks have taken place to settle the dispute and drivers in the RMT union will continue industrial action against London Underground plans for a voluntary four-day week after the first 24-hour strike from midday on Tuesday.

Services were reduced but not cancelled across most underground lines. Just over half of the capital’s tube drivers are members of the Aslef union, which has welcomed the four-day week plan, and were not on strike.

Early starters had to find alternative transport with services running only from 7.30am on Wednesday, as Transport for London (TfL) tried to limit overall disruption.

Wider congestion and disruption appeared far lower than in last September’s strikes by all RMT workers, with some companies in the capital relaxing rules to allow more working from home, and fine weather encouraging people to switch to cycling or walking.

Some passengers reported quieter trains than usual on lines where services operated well and commuters had not risked the tube, although most still faced long waits and crowded trains.

Santander bike hires were up 60% on Tuesday morning, TfL said, while Voi, one of the operators of e-scooter and ebike rentals in London, said rides were 52% higher than last week, with significant numbers of new users.

TfL said passengers should continue to check before travelling on Thursday, with services set to be reduced across all lines from midday and finishing by 8pm. On Friday morning the first trains will start from 7.30am.

Most of the Piccadilly, Waterloo & City and Circle lines are expected to have no service during strike hours, along with parts of the Metropolitan and Central lines. Other rail services will run, including the London Overground, Elizabeth line and the DLR.

While Aslef and TfL have expressed surprise at the strike action, the RMT said its drivers had concerns about fatigue, and blamed TfL for failing to negotiate.

TfL said its proposals for a four-day working week would bring London Underground in line with the working patterns of other train operating companies, and that drivers who wished to continue a five-day working week pattern would be able to do so.

An RMT spokesperson said the union objected to an “imposed, fake four-day week” and had raised “serious concerns from our members about shift length and resulting fatigue impacting safety”.

They added: “The strikes are going ahead because TfL said they would negotiate on all elements of the proposal and then U-turned, saying to us they would go ahead without any changes to their original proposals.

“We have sought assurances from TfL in writing that our members can stay on their current shift patterns and agreed terms and conditions. TfL have yet to respond to us adequately. So it is therefore not a voluntary scheme and TfL are seeking to impose it on our members.”

However Nick Dent, the director of customer operations for London Underground, said the “changes would be voluntary, there would be no reduction in contractual hours and those who wish to continue a five-day working week pattern would be able to do so”.

He added: “We urge the RMT to call off this strike, meet with us and avoid any further disruption to Londoners. While we have been able to run more services than planned over the last 24 hours, we expect significant disruption to continue into Friday and the level of service we can provide will vary across lines, so customers should continue to check before they travel for the remainder of this week.”

The RMT is planning four more 24-hour strikes in May and June unless the dispute is resolved.

The UK’s tax authorities have decided to fight against a ruling that would cut VAT across all public electric car chargers, despite a judge finding they have been overcharging for years under the law.

Charge My Street, a not-for-profit charging company, last month argued successfully that VAT should have been charged at 5%, rather than 20%, in a case at a London tax tribunal that could have a significant impact on electric car drivers’ costs. HM Revenue and Customs on Tuesday confirmed it will appeal against the ruling.

The appeal will in effect mean the government arguing to extend a disparity that costs some electric car drivers much more to recharge their vehicles, disincentivising the shift away from petrol and diesel.

Charge point operators said the decision to appeal would hold back the transition from polluting petrol and diesel by penalising electric car owners who cannot charge at home.

Electric car drivers have long complained they have to pay an unfair rate of VAT at public chargers. People plugging in at home pay only 5% VAT on electricity for domestic use, but the 20% rate for businesses applies at public chargers.

Campaigns to equalise the rates have appeared forlorn for years, with successive governments unwilling to lose out on future electricity VAT revenues to replace the £24.5bn in annual fuel duties applied on petrol and diesel sales. However, a London tax tribunal last month found that the 5% rate should in fact have applied all along – to the surprise and delight of the EV charging industry.

The VAT difference brings in an extra £85m a year for the Treasury, according to calculations by Zapmap, a charger map company. However, that is projected to rise to £315m by 2030 and billions after that as the number of electric cars rises.

The government does not appear so pleased. If the ruling is upheld it will put the Treasury in a tricky spot, amid fiscal pressures caused by the Iran war and pressure to abandon a planned fuel duty increase. The government is already committed to introducing pay-per-mile taxes on all electric cars.

Will Maden, a director at Charge My Street, said: “About 40% of the UK population, they don’t have drives. Transitioning to EVs is a huge problem. Adding 20% makes a huge difference.

“My personal view is I think we should be making the transition to EVs as cheap as we can. This is an environmental issue.”

Although the ruling only applies to Charge My Street, if the appeal fails, operators are geared up to lodge their own claims for overpaid VAT going back years.

John Lewis, chief executive at char.gy, a charge point operator, said HMRC’s appeal was a “deeply disappointing decision, and one that sends entirely the wrong signal to the millions of people who rely on public charging”. He said the company would immediately pass on a VAT cut to its customers.

He said: “The government talks about accelerating EV adoption, yet is actively choosing to maintain a tax structure that makes public charging more expensive than it needs to be and undermines the transition.”

The case hinges on the interpretation of a few lines in the VAT Act. It says that electricity counts as “always for domestic use” as long as one person does not use more than 1,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) a month at a single premises – enough to recharge a Tesla Model Y 16 times over. Accountancy firm Deloitte discovered the discrepancy, and worked pro bono with Charge My Street.

Three days of arguments at a tax tribunal focused on minutiae, such as the implications of the words “a month” and “premises”, according to Daniel Barlow, a Deloitte tax partner. However, in the end, Judge Harriet Morgan found it would be a “strained construction” to go for the 20% rate.

An HMRC spokesperson said: “We’re appealing this case, as our position is that standard rate VAT applies to electricity supplied through public EV charging infrastructure.”

Households without off-street parking could soon be able to charge their electric vehicles from home under new government plans to help households cut their need for expensive fossil fuels.

The government has promised to pass legislation this summer that will allow motorists to run power cables through a charging “gully” built into the pavement outside their home without the need for planning permission.

This means that before the end of this year, EV owners who aren’t able to fit their own car chargers at home will be able to charge up from the power connection indoors.

Motorists are not allowed to string charging cables across the pavement from their home but almost half of councils across the UK allow cross-pavement charging if you embed the cable in a gully. However, this still requires permission from the council.

Charging at home is usually much cheaper than using public car charge points, meaning more motorists may be willing to trade in their fossil fuel cars for an electric alternative if they know they can access cheaper electricity more easily.

This is partly because public charging has a VAT rate of 20% while home energy includes VAT at 5%. ChargeUK, the trade body for the charging industry, said equalising VAT would help ensure that motorists who cannot charge at home even after the planning changes would not be unfairly penalised.

The legislation is part of a string of measures to help protect households from the soaring cost of energy since the Middle East war disrupted supplies of crude, gas and fuels from the Gulf.

Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, said the “overwhelming lesson of this crisis is we need to go faster” on the government’s plans to reduce the UK’s reliance on volatile fossil fuel markets.

“Because every solar panel we put up, every wind turbine we build, every heat pump we install, every EV on the road makes our country more secure,” he told the Good Growth Foundation’s National Growth Debate on Tuesday.

The government has also promised to make it easier to install solar panels and heat pumps. This summer it will consult on changes to permitted development rights to make it easier to install air source heat pumps, particularly in flats, and on plans for low-income households to benefit from plug-in solar through the Warm Homes Plan.

Demand for solar panels, electric vehicles and heat pumps has leapt since the war began as households brace for a sharp increase in monthly energy bills when the next energy price cap takes effect in the summer.

Octopus Energy, the country’s biggest energy supplier, said its heat pump orders had more than doubled in March compared with February, while sales of solar power systems were up by almost 80%.

The supplier said new leases of electric vehicles rose by more than 85% over the same period. In a boost to EV sales, the price of battery electric cars has fallen below petrol cars in the UK for the first time, according to the car sales website Autotrader.