I’m an EV expert and I think Labour’s new Electric Car Grant is an expensive mess: GINNY BUCKLEY blasts £650m-backed scheme

As chief executive of dedicated electric car website Electrifying.com and a long-time advocate of electric vehicles, you’d be forgiven for thinking I’ve been celebrating this week’s news that Labour is bringing back grants for EVs.

The government press release that landed in my inbox on Monday proudly trumpeted discounts of up to £3,750 on electric cars – saying it was set to slash costs for thousands of UK drivers with an impressive £650million fund. 

It boasted that the scheme would be up and running within days, with manufacturers handling the paperwork.

Taking the news at face value, I initially welcomed such a bold move. 

But having delved into the detail, this is nothing short of an ill-conceived policy that raises more questions than answers.

Instead of encouraging electric car uptake, it will instead restrict consumer choice. 

Labour really needs to go back to the drawing board on this one… 

Despite a new EV being registered every 60 seconds in June, private buyer sales have stalled. 

They now make up just under 20 per cent of registrations, with the bulk going to company car drivers who enjoy generous tax breaks if they go electric.

In our November 2024 survey with the AA – responded to by over 11,000 UK drivers – 76 per cent told us that the upfront cost was the biggest barrier to switching. 

I believed fresh incentives would reignite momentum and give more drivers the confidence to switch.

My calculations suggested almost half of all new electric models on sale would fall below the £37,000 price cap. Crucially, this support appeared to be aimed where it was needed most: from school-run staples to budget-friendly runarounds.

How wrong I was. 

As they say, the devil is in the details – and as the week has unfolded, the details behind those upbeat headlines have painted a very different picture.

Instead of a straightforward grant on all EVs under £37,000 – designed to help hard-working people make a sustainable choice – the rigid rules and baffling conditions surrounding which cars qualify (and by how much) have left even the carmakers scratching their heads.

At the heart of this complexity is something called a Science Based Target (SBT), which requires manufacturers to commit to cutting greenhouse gas emissions in line with limiting global warming to 1.5C or below 2C, as set out in the Paris Agreement on climate change.

You’d assume the government would have a simple list of eligible manufacturers. 

Apparently not. 

Instead, car makers – with customers in dealerships already asking about discounts – are left wading through bureaucracy to figure it all out.

Even if a company has signed up to an SBT – like Renault or Ford – the scheme may still reject cars assembled in countries with poor overall sustainability records or high emissions. 

And, surprise surprise, even that isn’t as simple as it sounds.

The emissions calculations are split between where the battery is made and where the car itself is built. 

This means a car assembled in the UK or Europe may score well for manufacturing and earn the minimum £1,500 grant, but fail to reach the additional 70 per cent score needed for the full £3,750 if its battery is sourced from a country with a lower environmental score.

Transport Minister Lilian Greenwood told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday: ‘We don’t expect any cars that are assembled in China to be eligible for this scheme.’

This rules out cars like the Volvo EX30, the Mini electric (which incidentally, is built in factories powered by renewable energy), the MG4 and the Dacia Spring – family favourites which it seems won’t qualify for a penny. 

Making matters worse, many manufacturers striving to make EVs cheaper have switched to LFP batteries, which are predominantly made in China.

So much for my celebrations that the grant was focused on more affordable models.

The reality is that car making is a global business. 

Even if your car doesn’t bear a Chinese badge, the chances are part of it was manufactured there. 

And it’s not just Chinese-made cars at risk of ending up with nothing – brands from other nations like Korea which make some of the UK’s most popular cars could also end up with many models being excluded.

The government is effectively limiting consumer choice at the very moment they should be encouraging it. 

Far from being the shot in the arm that private buyers need, this ill-conceived grant scheme has only created questions and confusion.

I’m now telling anyone in the market for a new EV to pause before making a decision – especially since, bizarrely, it appears that if the entry-level model of a car costs under £37,000, the more expensive versions and trims in the same range might still be eligible for discounts.

This scheme encapsulates everything that’s wrong with government policymaking: good intentions, badly thought through and buried under layers of bureaucracy. It simply seems half-baked, with an announcement which was made too early.

If Labour truly wants to accelerate EV adoption, they need to go back to the drawing board and design something that actually works for the people it’s supposed to help and gives everyone some clarity. 

My advice? Start with the used market.