Government announces change to plug-in vehicle grants

The Government has this week announced a change to the Plug-in Car Grant (PICG), the Plug-in Van Grant (PIVG) and the Plug in Truck Grant (PITrG) rates and eligibility criteria. The reason for this change is due to the increasing choice of new vehicles, growing demand from customers, and rapidly rising number of chargepoints. They now want to re-focus their vehicle grants on the more affordable zero emission vehicles – where most consumers will be looking and where taxpayers’ money will make more of a difference. To effectively manage the grant budget, they weren’t able to give any more advance warning as when this was last changed in March 2020, there was a big spike in orders in the seven hours between the announcement and changes coming into effect at midnight. A similar spike wouldn’t be affordable within their current budgets.

The below explains what the changes are for the Plug-in Car grant.

Eligibility has changed:

From: Cars must cost less than £50,000. This is the recommended retail price (RRP), and includes VAT and delivery fees.
To: Cars must cost less than £35,000. This is the recommended retail price (RRP), and includes VAT and delivery fees (see full definition below)

 

Grant rates have changed:

From: 35% of purchase price, up to £3,000
To: 35% of purchase price, up to £2,500

The OZEV however have confirmed that dealers and vehicle manufacturers can claim for any orders that were placed by customers (Tusker) in the 28 days before the grant change which weren’t already logged on the OZEV portal.

For more information about the Plug in grants eligibility and applications you can read more on the Government website.