WRITE TO autocar@haymarket.com

Let’s help ourselves

To use British taxpayers’ money to help people buy foreign-made EVs – which helps foreign workers pay taxes to their governments, not ours – would be insane. Our tax money to help a foreign country succeed. However, to make an EV purchase grant applicable to only British-made cars (with Britishmade batteries) would make good financial sense. It’s the sort of upside I hoped to see from the mainly disastrous Brexit situation.

‘Lightbody’ Via autocar.co.uk

It’s anon-starter

Vauxhall boss James Taylor strongly criticised the lack of EV incentives in the chancellor’s spring budget.

Today, you can buy a £40k Mokka Electric with delivery miles from a Vauxhall dealer for £23k. If the incentives that Vauxhall has called for were in place, Joe Public would still be able to buy aMokka Electric for £23k, with the taxpayers’ money going straight to the manufacturer. The incentive is already there.

Also, when will people realise there’s much more to low EV sales than just price? When my car needs fuel, I go to a fuel station and fill up. I don’t have to think about it. With an EV, it means pre-planning and restrictions. Charge at home? Okay, but I’m on a dual fuel tariff. My provider doesn’t offer me gas, so I’d have to source my gas supply from a stand-alone company, and at present there isn’t one company that will provide gas only. Oh, and the overnight energy rate may be cheaper, but the standing charge and rate through the day is pricier than what I pay today. There’s more to the cost of EVs than just the car. Until there’s joint infrastructure in place, it won’t work.