The government has finally killed off the plug-in car grant scheme to any new orders, costing buyers of any fully electric car with a list price of under £32,000 an extra £1,500. 

The Office for Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV) says it is now refocusing funding towards public charging and “supporting the purchase of other road vehicles where the switch to electric requires further development.” 

This means the remaining £300 million of grant funding will now be refocused towards extending grants for plug in taxis, motorcycles, commercial vehicles and wheelchair-accessible cars. 

All existing applications for the car grant will continue to be honoured and where a car has been sold in the two working days before the announcement, but an application for the grant from dealerships has not yet been made, the sale will also still qualify for the grant. 

Transport Minister Trudy Harrison said: “The government continues to invest record amounts in the transition to EVs, with £2.5 billion injected since 2020, and has set the most ambitious phase-out dates for new diesel and petrol sales of any major country. But government funding must always be invested where it has the highest impact if that success story is to continue. 

“Having successfully kickstarted the electric car market, we now want to use plug-in grants to match that success across other vehicle types, from taxis to delivery vans and everything in between, to help make the switch to zero emission travel cheaper and easier.” 

Since its inception in 2011, the government’s plug-in car grant has provided over £1.4 billion and supported the purchase of nearly half a million clean vehicles.

Grants for electric vans and motorcycles will continue

Electrifying.com’s founder and CEO Ginny Buckley said: “Electric cars are already out of reach for many hard working families and I fear this pushes us further down the road of becoming a two tier nation when it comes to ownership. 

“As the government points out sales have risen by 70% in the last year, and now represent 1 in 6 new cars joining UK roads. But dig a little deeper and those figures reveal that a large proportion are registered to business users benefiting from financial incentives including salary sacrifice schemes and low benefit in kind taxation. 

“This grant made a big difference to many hard working families and removing it seems short sighted, particularly as the Scottish Government announced last week that £28 million will be made available as part of the Low Carbon Transport Loan scheme, giving drivers up to £28,000 in interest-free loans for a new electric car and up to £20,000 for a second hand one.

"The onus is now on the car makers to bring out smaller less expensive models to help drive uptake."

Ginny (left) with Transport Minister Trudy Harrison and a Vauxhall Mokka, which is no longer grant eligible