On the Pros and Cons of the UK's New Electric Vehicle Subsidy
Those in the market for a new EV can now benefit from a £3750 UK government subsidy over the next five years. Total funding runs to £650 million and is designed to nudge consumers to mvoe from petrol and deisel engines to electric vehicles.
As well as the grants, EV charging points and NHS vehicles will see a vest of £63 million.
ATM 21.6% of new cars sold are electric, and the government aims to bring this up to 28% by the end of this year.
Pros of the EV Subsidy
One of the main barriers to the adoption of EVs is the high upfront price. This subsidy represents between a 5-10% discount on the most popular models of EV cars, so it could be the tipping point for those sitting on the fence over decision to make the switch.
This will also help with the overall Net Zero target, petrol and diesel cars being among the main contributors to greenhouse gases.
This will also be a boost to the EV industry, helping to create manufacturing employment, battery employment, and EV infrastructure employment. The UK automotive industry as a whole can benefit from locally driven growth in sales.
Finally it's necessary that all of this is backed up by charging infrastructure and it's good to see a Vest in this as well to support the likely increase in sales of EV cars!
The Hyundai Ioniq 5 - From £40K
Disadvantages of the EV Subsidy
If everyone goes for the Max subsidy this is only going to help 173K consumers over three years, so that's just over 50K consumers a year, compared to almost 2M new car sales last year.
That's more symbolic than behaviour shifting in scale.
Also this is going to benefit the already rich, it reminds me of the solar panel grants - it wouldn't surprise me if a significant chunk of this money goes to 'second cars' for the richest 10%.
This means it could well be EVs getting sold and mostly sitting on the driveway only being used for every other journey!
There's also the problem of the battery waste, we haven't really got an effective solution for that yet!
Final Thoughts...
I'm generally for Green subs, we do get a payback in terms of reduced emissions, however this amount is so small it's really not going to make that much difference.
I think I can get over the injustice of the middle classes benefitting from this mainly.
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Another con is that you are effectively taking everybody's tax money to help pay for new cars for a few people. It may seem like the percentage of EVs will increase over time. But EVs wear out in a few years just like regular cars, so you're likely to subsidize the same people over and over.
Yes fair point!
I saw this story about it. More expensive EVs (over £37k), including Teslas, are not included so the rich will be paying full whack. What it may do is make some cars more affordable to regular folk. Some manufacturers are dropping prices to be included. There are other caveats about how carbon intensive the factories are, so there are lower tiers of subsidy. Details on models covered here.
EV prices have come more into line with oil-burners lately and can be much cheaper to run. It's obviously easier if you have a driveway so you can charge at home. We need alternatives like communal chargers with decent pricing so others can benefit. Someone near us has a groove in the pavement outside their terraced house so they can run a cable. The council is providing those I think. There are also some public chargers in the village.
We've had over 100 years of burning oil for cars and it is time for a change. I expect we import a lot of that oil, but we can make clean(er) electricity here. Companies and governments need to find ways to make it work for everyone.
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We're doing about 1-2% of what we cld be doing it's a start- I think a reasonable network that's affordable is the biggest barrier!
ahhh this is an interesting one. In the Netherlands we had this for EVs over the last years and it is now gone. Better said: it was a rule for more tax benefits for leasing an EV. Now that the tax benefit is done, the end of lease cars are being dumped on the second hand market, where by now you can get a 5 year old tesla as an example for the price of 15K. Awesome indeed, the reality is that all of these are bought up by husslers from other countries to be exported because the EVs are more expensive there.
That is also not how it initially was intended, same goes for subsidising it.
Infrastructure wise here there is a rule that when you get an EV, there has to be a charging option within 200 meters from your house. That means that you file for this at your municipality and they have to take care of this, which is not a bad deal at all actually.
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OH OK nice - is there a rule on charging density too? 1 charger cld be servicing 100s of vehicles by that rule!
For real change to happen, we need policies that guarantee fair access to EVs and promote sustainable practices for everyone.