The Plug-in Car Grant (PiCG) has been axed!
The 14th June 2022 will go down as the day the UK Government removed financial incentives to purchase an electric vehicle.
Introduced in 2011, the Plug-in Car Grant aimed to increase mass adoption of EVs by offering a fairly significant contribution towards the total cost of the vehicle. But it wasn’t particularly popular at first. In 2011, less than 1,000 electric cars were sold.
Compare this to 2022, where nearly 100,000 EVs have been bought by eco-money-conscious motorists in the first 5 months of the year alone. They’ve become so popular that one-in-six of every car sold is fully electric.
But you don’t need to look to 2011 to track the rapid increase in demand. The amount of EVs registered in March of 2022 alone, surpassed the number registered in the entirety of 2019.
In December 2021, the grant reduced dramatically to only £1,500 for an EV with a list price of less than £32,000.
The Government states it wants to refocus public funds into charging infrastructure and other vehicles where electrification is more challenging. This includes taxis, motorcycles, vans/trucks and wheelchair accessible vehicles.
Electric cars have become desirable and sought after and as prices slowly decrease, we’ll only see more of them on the roads. Supporting every mode of transport in electrification will keep parity with all motorists, allowing everybody to make the choice to go eco.
Through investment in charging infrastructure, the DfT states it wants to eradicate “range anxiety” and allow everybody to make a smooth transition to zero-emission transport.
However, with a cost of living crisis, purchasing an EV just simply isn’t affordable. Axing the PiCG will now make EVs out of reach for thousands of motorists, slowing the uptake that would have otherwise been seen.
With it now even more difficult to purchase an electric car, leasing remains the most affordable option to get behind the wheel of an EV.