Bungs for electric cars is politically misguided folly
What possible justification is there for using public money to help someone buy an electric car? A subsidy simply provides a cash windfall to those who were going to buy one anyway. Such subsidies help only a fraction of car buyers yet taxpayers as a whole will foot the bill.
This latest wheeze to boost the electric car market mirrors a system of cash handouts previously available to EV buyers before being axed by the Conservatives in 2022. At the time, ministers said the subsidies were no longer needed because they had 'successfully kick-started the electric car market'. Clearly not. Yet no lessons appear to have been learnt in government.
The problem facing ministers is that sales of EVs to private buyers are not going as well as they had hoped. There are just over 1.5 million EVs on UK roads, compared with 19.2 million petrol and 11 million diesel vehicles. Many drivers have been put off by high upfront costs. Battery-powered vehicles typically cost thousands more than their petrol counterparts: the average price of a new EV in Britain is just under £50,000, more than double the cost of a typical petrol car at £22,000.
Electric cars have also been plagued by high depreciation because their batteries degrade: the average used EV price has fallen by 46 per cent between 2021 and 2024, compared with 19 per cent for cars with an internal combustion. The car-buying public are no fools.
The reluctance of millions of drivers to go electric quickly enough is putting the government's wider net zero strategy in jeopardy. A ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars is due to take effect from 2030. That deadline looks wildly optimistic as well as politically foolish.
Ministers should go back to the drawing board. It is political madness to insist on policies that artificially distort the car market in a desperate effort to meet ideological net-zero goals. The government appears more concerned with wasting public funds on looking good rather than doing good.
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