Taking EVs for 'Grant'ed

or why the new EV car grant might not be the best thing

Photo by Jonathan Pielmayer on Unsplash

The new plug-in car grant was announced by the government earlier this week. Basically it covered the cost of £3,750 towards the purchase of a new electric vehicle. There are a couple of conditions attached to it, but on the whole it’s a good thing.

It addressed a pressing need that has been raised by the vehicle OEMs for the last couple of years: The ZEV Mandate Problem.

If you’re a vehicle OEM the ZEV Mandate Problem goes like this - “The government is expecting us to change the way we work and sell an increasingly high number of electric vehicles into a market that doesn’t really want them. If customers don’t buy them we get punished for every car we sell that doesn’t meet the guidelines. It’s all stick and no carrot”

Notwithstanding the fact that there are a number of factual inaccuracies in that statement - not least the one that the market doesn’t really want them, and that they get punished for every car they sell that doesn’t meet the criteria - the underlying statement has some validity. The ZEVMandate is all stick and no carrot.

So a grant such as this will act as a salve to those manufacturers who felt that the government was hitting them with a stick but providing no carrot for anyone to ‘help’ them achieve these goals.

Fair point.

However, there has been some discussion in the EV sphere over whether this is the best application of those funds. For some it makes sense - put more money into expensive new cars, let people buy them and it helps the OEMs and gets more cars into the market.

But for others it has a knock-on effect.