Goverment cutting electric car subsidies?

[Countrypaul]

According to the FT it looks lie the goverment is slashing incentives for electric and hybrid cars:
https://twitter.com/Petercampbell1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1050446203236900864&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2Flive%2Fbusiness-45759377

Goverment announcement here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/reformed-plug-in-car-grant-extended-into-next-decade

[JohnS]

Frankly this makes sense.

Best to stop giving grants to PHEVs with low range and direct them to BEVs.

I appreciate that I benefited from the grant for my Outlander, but I was an early adopter who helped to get the critical mass going.  Same with my PV install in March 2010.  I would have saved a lot if I had delayed it to near the end of the initial 40p + rate.

It is good to see the government learning from past mistakes in keeping grants too high for too long.

[MeatyFool]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45831150

Bless ‘em!  Like little children having their toys taken away!

So instead of providing full on BEVs to achieve what the planet needs, they decided to go PHEV to sweat their existing assets and cover their own bottom line.

Tough.  Good call by the government.

Unfortunately, Jo Public will jut read this the way big auto wants them too - entirely the opposite.

Meatyfool..

[azps]

Frankly this makes sense.

Best to stop giving grants to PHEVs with low range and direct them to BEVs.

Cutting grants to hybrids makes sense. Actually, giving them grants in the first place never made sense: BEVs are not an evolution of PHEVs: PHEVs are a technological dead-end.

However, reducing the grant for BEVs, when there's only been 60,000 BEV grants made, is premature and foolish.

[kristen]

They should be taxing the CO2 on Fossil Fuels to drive customers towards BEV.  High mileage drivers would move first, and they are presumably? the bigger polluters.

I'm not contributing anything by way of Road Tax / Fuel Tax to roads budget. Electric vs. Petrol is a saving of nearly £150 a month for each 10,000 miles driven annually.

[GarethC]

Ahem... Range extenders still qualify 😁

OK with removing PHEV grant, but think that should have been accompanied by an increase in BEV grant, or at least not a cut.

[dan_b]

Just a thought - does this impact on the London Black Cab?  That’s been fairly criticised for its high purchase price and relatively low battery range - if it loses the grant subsidy I imagine it’ll hit uptake prettt hard? 

[Westie]

Just a thought - does this impact on the London Black Cab?  That’s been fairly criticised for its high purchase price and relatively low battery range - if it loses the grant subsidy I imagine it’ll hit uptake prettt hard? 

There's a new catagory 1 Taxi definition and the TX is the only vehicle in it at the moment.

I can imagine that Geely had that arrangement sorted before they ever set shop here!

Category 1 taxis

These vehicles are purpose-built taxis and have CO2 emissions of less than 50g/km and can travel at least 112km (70 miles) without any CO2 emissions at all:

LEVC TX
The grant will pay for 20% of the purchase price for these vehicles, up to a maximum of £7,500.