Labour to Reintroduce Grants for Electric Cars to ‘Bribe’ Motorists
Labour will give out new grants for electric cars, the Department for Transport has confirmed, despite a previous scheme that failed to spark enthusiasm for EVs being scrapped three years ago. The Telegraph has more.
Drivers will be able to reduce the purchase cost of a new electric car by up to £3,750 for vehicles priced up to £37,000.
Officials hope the measure will encourage more drivers to switch to electric motoring, after Labour pledged to ban the sale of new fully petrol or diesel cars and vans from 2030.
The DfT said 33 new electric vehicle (EV) models were available for less than £30,000.
Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, said: “This EV grant will not only allow people to keep more of their hard-earned money, it’ll help our automotive sector seize one of the biggest opportunities of the 21st century.
“And with over 82,000 public charge points now available across the UK, we’ve built the infrastructure families need to make the switch with confidence.”
Drivers buying electric cars can benefit from tax breaks if their employer has a company car scheme, but there have been no universally available grants since they were axed by the Conservative government in June 2022.
Labour has been criticised for its pledge on electric cars, with some motorists reluctant to switch to them for fear of being stranded on long journeys.
The grants will be funded through a new £650 million scheme, and the amount buyers can claim will be based on a car’s “sustainability criteria”, the DfT said.
The greenest vehicles will be in band one and eligible for grants of up to £3,750, while band two vehicles will receive up to £1,500.
Car manufacturers will be able to apply for the money through the electric car grant from Wednesday.
Worth reading in full.
In the Spectator, Ross Clark says bribing motorists to buy electric vehicles is an expensive mistake: “What makes the Government think that its new offer will spark the market for EVs when the grants showered on motorists by the May and Johnson governments failed to do so?”
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Unbelievable, so my taxes are going to be given to people to buy a car, which I couldn’t afford even with the discount/bribe. How on earth can that be right? If the manufacturer can’t sell the car without the bribe, it’s either not attractive or it’s too expensive, either way it has no demand so should be withdrawn from the market, not subsidised.
An idiotic minister was on the news this morning saying that help would be available for people living in terraced streets to put a cable under the pavement and have an access flap to a recharging socket by the kerb. More lack of awareness about how people live from these over pampered morons in government. How do you guarantee in a busy terraced street that you will be able to park alongside your charging point?
……….or, that the access flap to a recharging socket by the kerb doesn’t result in a waterlogged and unsafe electrical installation in rainy weather that we sometimes get ?
My first house was a stone terraced with solid walls over twelve inches thick. Drilling through the walls was an horrendous job. When I had an alarm fitted it took half a day and the poor lad doing the fitting had to knock off after the first hour in order to go and buy some replacement drill bits.
My thoughts also. It is not the Labour Party’s money, or the Dept of Transport, it is OUR money – the tax payers. It is taking from the many and giving to the privileged few. Is this not the opposite of Labour Party socialist ‘values’?
Don’t worry, it’s not your taxes – they already spent that money, this is just going to be added to the borrowing!
So taxpayers’ money tomorrow.
Taxpayers debt money tomorrow…
…and the day after ad infinitum…
As I suggested in today’s “round up” comments, it seems to me that it’s a bonus for certain Chinese manufacturers, especially if you look at the price cap to get the grant!
The news report I heard this morning suggested that Chinese-made vehicles would not be eligible for the grant. One thing’s for certain: if there are any loopholes, the Chinese will be smart enough to exploit them.
There aren’t many non-Chinese EVs at that price point are there?
Why does the word “price” always nowadays have to carry the addendum “point?”
🤣 just to make the …. point?
😂 🤣 😂
Watch the electric vehicle dealers increase their prices by £3,750 for vehicles which were priced up to £37,000.
Fantastic grift, innit?!
When will governments realise, offer our money to help a section of society and all that will happen is the vendor puts prices up. Cars, childcare, houses….. it happens time and time again and they never learn. The beneficiary of the subsidy ends up paying the same price or more, the taxpayer unable or not wanting the service is poorer and the vendor laughs all the way to the bank. The government should just stay the…. out of it.
You will lose a lot more than that in just the first year’s depreciation compared to IC cars., and it is downhill all the way after that.
Plus the new ev surcharge tax – government gifting borrowed money on the one hand, and retrieving it to waste on other pointless spending with the other. I guess this lets them borrow for a seemingly ‘worthy’ cause, then actually piss it away on some other hare-brained seem the second time around…
Only 7% of cars on the road are battery cars, and that’s after about 5 years of propaganda. 56,000 went to mobility users last year, and car dealers are registering cars themselves to make them appear as a sale, thus avoiding the fine. Businesses account for most of the rest for a tax break. They are on Autotrader as ‘used’ cars with delivery mileage only, most two years old, at half or less the new price. They should give them away with cornflakes.
I’ll just have the cornflakes please
You can’t have milk on those, think of the climate
I know. That’s why I said I’ll just have the cornflakes. I am a good citizen.
Congratulations – you’ve just increased your government credit score by 10 points 😉
Thanks, oh Purpleone
No problem! No points removed for sarcasm (this time!) 😉
😀😀😀
Are we getting a bit ahead of ourselves here? All this talk about EVs, wind turbines and solar farms is all well and good, but haven’t we lost sight of the original objective which was to change and stabilise the climate? In Britain we’ve spent tens of billions already, and I read somewhere that the total expenditure this century across the world is in the region of 3 trillion. Where is the return on this investment? By how much has CO2 been reduced? How much has the world climate changed as a result? Which metrics show an unambiguous improvement as a result of this massive investment? Who has benefitted and by how much? Had we spent this amount on something else, would the world have been a better place for most of its peoples? Am I right in thinking that the data produced by the climate people show little or no change as a result of this investment? Are we pouring massive amounts of money down the drain? If we extrapolate any change that’s attributable to where we allegedly want to be, how many more trillions will it take to get there? Quadrillions?
Too many difficult questions, mike. You need to have FAITH!
😉
Indeed he does but I would go further. mike is clearly an apostate and we all know what happens to those. Neither he nor anyone else should be allowed to ask questions like this.
If you’re encouraging people to buy new cars, surely CO2 is going up?
The smart (using the traditional meaning) thing with that policy is that it’s almost impossible to prove whether it works or not. How can you measure the weather outcome in a decade or two to warrant the current financial support? We could be four or five Parliaments on for anything to come to light, in reality.
Indeed..that’s why they like to invent the problems. It means they get to invent the solutions, too.
I do not accept that a time period of less than a century has any merit in terms of climate / weather.
Terrific points.
“I believe in Britain” – does that answer your question! It’s the Ed Millivolt answer.
According the shrill screeching of the Eco Zealots and Presstitutes all the trillions spent so far has had no impact whatsoever, and every day its just gets worse and worse.
After all we have spent we still appear to be hitting new records for peak high temperature days, weeks, months and years. Electricity prices have gone up massively.
Apparently atmospheric CO2 levels are still rising, regardless of what crackpot idea we spend it on!
The grift that keeps giving!
It’s a bit OTT dramatic music-wise but this Aussie documentary on Chinese EV activity in Indonesia is eye-opening. I knew it was bad but not this bad.
https://youtu.be/SNag4j0nmKU?si=vb6sKvLiu3yKpm-d
I trust that anyone who bought an EV in the three years between the last tax-funded
briberysubsidy scheme and this new one will get an MBE at the very least.Geoff Buys Cars in a recent YT video said the average price of a battery car is over £50,000 so an average car is not eligible.
And with over 82,000 public charge points now available across the UK
Well in my recent visits to car parks in 2 towns all the charging bays were empty….
it’ll help our automotive sector seize one of the biggest opportunities of the 21st century.
Only a moron – or politician – would actually believe such drivel.
They are just reading the script put in front of them… they don’t actually think about it!
Taxing low-income people in order to subsidise cars for the virtue-signalling middle class is both immoral and obscene.
Bet the total budget will exceed the winter heating allowance. The numpties!
“It’ll help our automotive sector,” says Heidi Alexander.
No, it won’t. It will help the Chinese automotive sector. They will be the main beneficiaries.
They have crucified our own automotive industries with pointless mandates to invest billions in electric vehicles. And now they are going to give our money to the Chinese so that they can finish our own automotive companies off.
In the early days of the motor car there were no filling stations so wealthy car owners created the RAC to supply fuel at spots around the country. No ICE filling stations have ever been subsidised and apart from a brief scrappage scheme there have been no ICE subsidies. Labour is giving our money to wealthy car manufacturers and wealthy people who can afford EVs