UK cuts the plug in grant again

[Mart]

Bit disappointing to see the PiG cut again, and from £2,500 down to £1,500. Every nudge towards cleaner, greener transport is so important, be it riding bikes, useing trains, or diverting an ICE car purchase to a BEV, so the UK seems to be a bit ahead of the curve when reducing support, and behind the curve when it comes to adequate charging infrastructure.

UK cuts grants for electric vehicles for second time in a year

The UK government has cut grants for electric vehicles for the second time in a year, provoking the anger of the car industry and prompting a call for car tax to be redesigned.

The grant available for electric cars will fall from £2,500 to £1,500 – half the sum available to buyers at the start of the year. The upper price limit for eligible car models will fall from £35,000 to £32,000, down from £50,000 in March.

The government is also cutting the grant on large and small vans from £6,000 to £5,000 and £3,000 to £2,500 respectively, it said in an announcement on Wednesday.

and whilst there's no magic money tree, we should look at the bigger picture, which this article today on US health implications/costs illustrates:

Good News! New Study Finds Vehicle Emissions Decline Linked To Decreased Deaths, $270 Billion In Savings In USA

The researchers estimated the social cost of on-road emissions in 2017. This was the sum of monetary damages of mortality caused by PM2.5 and climate change damages. That number was $260 billion. The good news is that the number is low compared to what it could have been if vehicles were still emitting 2008 levels per mile of pollution. That number would have been at least $530 billion.

[Mr Gus]

If we "did a Scotland" i'd buy myself an E-motorcycle. (emphasis on the "motor" not engine) small material footprint for out here in the un-catered for sticks.

Would be nice to be an all EV household (fighting over charging sockets)

[dan_b]

One objective of the grant was/is to increase EV adoption and scale it at pace. In the last 12 months, we’ve seen more EVs registered in the UK than we saw registered in the previous DECADE. I’d say it’s doing its job.

Another key objective was to lower prices. Not only has the grant reduced purchase prices in its application; it’s also reduced them through its withdrawal. What happened after the last cut in the grant? OEMs reduced the prices of many of their EVs.

The aim is to get to a strong market without subsidies, and we’re closer to that than before. Weaning a market off incentives is naturally unpopular, but that doesn’t mean it’s the wrong thing to do. I had a similar internal debate about the cutting, then ending, of the solar FiT. But solar installs are still happening at an increased speed than before the FiT.

Lastly - this is still ultimately a SUPPLY-constrained market. The UK will probably get about 400,000 new EVs to sell in 2022, and every single one will sell. Demand is likely to be double that I'd reckon. The question for OEMs is how many more they can send to the UK?

The communication around this was poor of course, but perhaps the reason for the rush is that EV registrations have been much higher than expected and therefore the funding ran out way faster than planned?

[AlBargey]

Well it was also quite clearly fundamentally biased towards helping the better off which isn't very equitable, if you had £50k spare to spend on a car, then sorry, but you don't need £2.5k towards it. Imagine giving the same amount of money to people in poverty to buy a bike, escooter etc.. yeah, heresy! But would have been much fairer to help mobilise a greener fairer society.

I do think EV grants etc are a good thing, it's just we have policy makers who seem adept at making sure the rules benefit people who may not necessarily need the benefits or nudge in the first place.

[dan_b]

Although again what we've seen is a very large take-up by company car/fleet purchasers this year (driven in no small part by the 1% BiK rate) and as these are a disproportionately large amount of new car sales, which also do more miles than average per year, it will have helped reduce pollution more quickly by getting bigger high mileage diesels off the road faster?

[Stinsy]

Don't forget cars are a pipeline. The BEVs bought because of the grant and 0%/1% BIK rates will end up on the used market after 3 years where ordinary people with more modest budgets will benefit from them...

[Mart]

I've never bought into the subsidies helping wealthy people argument, be it PV, heat pumps or BEV's. It's a bit like supercar and Rolls Royce buyers helping to fund/develop ABS (and a whole raft of other technologies). So the first of anything will cost more, and if that product is desireable sooner (for climate and local emission reasns) then it should be artificially supported. The PV FiTs scheme was attacked for the high levels in the early years, but without FiT schemes all over the World, we wouldn't have artificially boosted demand, to boost supply, to trigger all the cost reductions.

I also don't have a problem with the PiG supporting any BEV vehicle, since the amount is fixed, so technically the support falls in percentage terms as the cost of the vehicle gets higher. However saying that, at £1,500, or £2,500 it becomes somewhat less important for vehicles in the over £32k or £35k bracket anyway. So nudging a £100k buyer from ICE to BEV is still important, but I appreciate the 'nudge' is less significant.

Personally I find it frustrating that the UK is lowering what is already a fairly low level of support compared to other countries that are paying far higher figures than the old £2.5k PiG.

But, Dan raises an important point about supply, if demand exceeds supply at the new (or old) level of support, then it's actually a good move, so long as it doesn't reduce the growth in support for BEV's in the UK, since it's still early days. But (sorry for the buts, and I am arguing against myself here) mathematical projections of the BEV and ICE sales figures in the UK, show the curves meeting at 50% each in mid 2023 ...... which is simply staggering, but we need to consider the Osborne Effect, which may mean the BEV percentage is growing rapidly, because the ICE sales are falling, or may fall rapidly. Also these are only projections and subject to significant variation.

Electric Vehicles Could Be The Majority Of Car Sales As Soon As 2023


Can I suggest though, that perhaps now, rather than quibble over the PiG, the Gov should be massively supporting the charging infrastructure, which appears to be growing at a slower rate than BEV sales, so not only is it behind the curve, but falling further behind, and for (dare I say it) non-Tesla drivers, it isn't great, and undermines confidence for some considering a BEV. That undermining may be greater than a £1.5k or £2.5k subsidy, and impacts SH buyers too.

[Joeboy]

Well it was also quite clearly fundamentally biased towards helping the better off which isn't very equitable, if you had £50k spare to spend on a car, then sorry, but you don't need £2.5k towards it. Imagine giving the same amount of money to people in poverty to buy a bike, escooter etc.. yeah, heresy! But would have been much fairer to help mobilise a greener fairer society.

I do think EV grants etc are a good thing, it's just we have policy makers who seem adept at making sure the rules benefit people who may not necessarily need the benefits or nudge in the first place.

Very well put and couldn't agree more. It should be about helping the if I may be so crude, lower levels of the financial pyramid. Get them in at volume, get them thinking and the carbon count will fall for all to benefit from.

One of the main drivers behind myself & SWMBO purchasing a 300 mile range £50k+ EV is that we do not trust this or any govt to grow the charging infrastructure at the rate it needs to be grown at and to. Also too many idiots out there who damage the public chargers or ICE or park and don't charge etc. Why leave ourselves open to such drivel...

Personally i'll look into charging our EV on the Tesla supercharger network if need be and pay the extra for the convenience and speed.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alistairch ... 33afa8784d

[AE-NMidlands]

in a similar vein / somewhat related: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/ ... ging-grant (electric-cars-deadline-nears-to-claim-home-charging-grant)

Funds are designed to give up to £350 towards cost of buying and installing a home charging point
There are only a few weeks left to apply for a UK government grant to help with the cost of getting an electric vehicle home charging point installed if you own your house.

The Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme is an official grant that provides a 75% contribution – up to a maximum of £350 – towards the cost of a charging point and its installation. The main requirements are that the applicant owns, leases or has ordered a qualifying vehicle and has appropriate off-street parking.

From April 2022, the scheme will no longer be open to homeowners living in “single-unit properties” – in other words, detached, semi-detached and terrace houses and bungalows, so the charging point will need to be installed by 31 March and probably booked by February....

Personally I want to be able to change to no car. Occasional taxis, more deliveries, plus improved public transport is needed, and I am expecting to reduce my travel demand as well. As someone said in another thread, "we need to stop burning stuff" and this is part of it. Don't forget the embedded energy in everything new.

[Joeboy]

in a similar vein / somewhat related: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/ ... ging-grant (electric-cars-deadline-nears-to-claim-home-charging-grant)

Funds are designed to give up to £350 towards cost of buying and installing a home charging point
There are only a few weeks left to apply for a UK government grant to help with the cost of getting an electric vehicle home charging point installed if you own your house.

The Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme is an official grant that provides a 75% contribution – up to a maximum of £350 – towards the cost of a charging point and its installation. The main requirements are that the applicant owns, leases or has ordered a qualifying vehicle and has appropriate off-street parking.

From April 2022, the scheme will no longer be open to homeowners living in “single-unit properties” – in other words, detached, semi-detached and terrace houses and bungalows, so the charging point will need to be installed by 31 March and probably booked by February....

Personally I want to be able to change to no car. Occasional taxis, more deliveries, plus improved public transport is needed, and I am expecting to reduce my travel demand as well. As someone said in another thread, "we need to stop burning stuff" and this is part of it. Don't forget the embedded energy in everything new.

You would hope that the taxis, delivery vans and buses that you shift to would be electric? Otherwise its just shifting the pollution to another source? A bike is a good answer and I applaud the hardcores I see, even pulling small trailers.
As to embedded energy, the answer for myself is to maintain and fix all I can, repair when broken or repurpose. In the case of ev's I'll be selling the current one and hopefully it will continue offering pollution free motoring for decades then second life as home storage way down the road.

The Nissan Leaf is built so well that there's no reason that it can't be running clean miles out at the 200,000 mile odometer reading. By the time I sell it, It will be about 34k on a 2015 plate so just run in really.

The embedded energy/cost of entry can also be viewed by how much of a hit the initial buyer takes on the vehicle. They may very well see a 25% hit on the cost but be selling on a vehicle that retains 90% of its initial potential. If that initial buyer didn't, then hypothetical later owners 2,3 & 4 don't get to and instead run about in polluting ICE vehicles. Its still early days in the whole EV ownership pyramid but I stand behind what i've just written although i'm also all for smaller less costly new EV's for the masses.

I've had to take the job of installing a charge point at my house off my offshore mate as he can't say for sure when he'll get the final seal of approval to operate although he has done the course. As the window is closing on the grant for installing I have moved to another company and will hope to have them on site next week for an inspection and quote.