If now isn’t the time to be giving more money to electric cars, then when is? The Government has decided to put all its eggs in one basket and focus its funding on expanding the electric charge point network and why not?
The Government is cutting its last remaining subsidies for electric cars in the UK, which means that it will be full-on supporting battery-powered vehicles as it pulls out of the £300 million plug-in car grant scheme that it had going on.
What does this mean for us? This means that the UK will end up being the only big European country with zero incentives for electric cars, can you believe it? This might come as a surprise to some, but carmakers, probably saw this coming and could have predicted themselves this would happen.
The grants that the Government had created did a cracking job of getting the market for ultra-low emission vehicles up and running. Sales of electric cars have been through the roof since they started to take off in 2011. We’re talking about them hitting nearly 100,000 in the first five months of 2022! The only way is up from there right?
With the sale of battery-powered and hybrid electric cars making up for more than half of all new cars sold and fully electric cars on the rise too, you don’t need us to tell you how many new cars are joining us on the road every day.
Think about it, reductions in the grants that have happened previously have had little impact on the demand for electric cars. This shows that it was the right time to shift resources and focus more on the way things are looking charging-wise and with the sale of other types of vehicles too.
Ok, so not everyone will agree with the Government’s decision on this one, but let’s face it, how often does anyone agree with anything that the Government does. For example, some might argue that pulling the plug on car grants is sending out the wrong message to motorists. The Government’s commitment to zero ambition isn’t coming across as well as it could have done, especially with new car sales dropping as well. Some would question whether now is the right time.
If you think of it this way, with what the Government is doing, this means that here in the UK, we are now the only major European market to have literally zero upfront purchase incentives for electric vehicle car buyers. Is this not a bit strange when we have the most ambitious plans for the uptake of electric vehicles?
You can predict what will happen now, manufacturers will be bugged to sell more and more electric vehicles than are needed right now, so how can this be the right time for this to happen? This decision from the Government has to have come at one of the worst possible times, right?
What needs to happen? It’s simple if we are going to have any sort of chance as a country of hitting our high targets, then surely the Government needs to help with encouraging and supporting lower-income households in the transition to electric vehicles.
If even the least expensive electric vehicles were just that bit more affordable then we might stand a chance. The incentive the Government had was the last bit of hope available to the public but now it’s gone.
