I'm off the weekend to look at ev/hybrid cars for a car change next year.A bit previous I know but. I was thinking,if the government want cleaner air,could the new car grant not be better to encourage people to change?The new mg5 ev,,£25000 when you can buy a smallish new ice car for £9000.What do we think?This will be my first alternative fuel car,the prices seem a bit steep.
Grant
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Give up for now, if your in the budget of new cars at £9k. Or get a really good job in Norway, and move there. Plus once you factor in 5 years of fuel, ved and maintenance savings a Skoda Citygo EV will be on par for total cost of ownership with it's petrol / diesel alternative.
Not turning my nose up,just think the government should give more if they want everyone to change,that's all so going by the last few comments this forum is trash,so keep slagging other people off,I'm going,goodbye,and have fun with other narrow minded people.
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MG5 can currently be bought for £20,495, and ZS EV from £19,995.
Makes the wee VAG EVs look pretty redundant.
Not sure what new "smallish ICE car" you can get for £9k these days unless you want a manual gearbox Sandero or similar.
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You can easily lease something for 2-3 years for £20k, thats £800 pcm for 2 years, easily Tesla teritory, or £550 pcm for 3 years or 400 pcm for 4 years. If you add a bit more you might be able to haggle a deal on a new / nearly new Nissan Leaf 40kw.
TBH we dont want just anyone driving EV's, they are now a nice middle class perk, nice flash cars with peanuts running costs, paid for by the taxes in fuel duty and VED of ice drivers. You have to change in 2030 anyway so just hang on paying driving taxes until then, im sure there will be lots of choice 2nd hand or small car buy then, possibly as low as ~£15k for 100 miles of range.
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The Government screwed us in March, EV Grant is now £3000.
It's important to compare apples to apples, I know the MG5 isn't a VW estate but I'd say its a fair bit better than a Dacia Logan (no offense to Dacia drivers)
Most EV's when you compare like for like around around 8-10k more expensive than their ICE counterparts. The lower cost of ownership (service, fuel etc) usually makes up for this after 4-5 years but this depends on your circumstances.
I agree to a certain extent though if the government were serious they'd increase the grant but it's probably better to spend money on the charging infrastructure at this point we need a lot of on street chargers before we can even think about a full transition to EVs only
Most EV's when you compare like for like around around 8-10k more expensive than their ICE counterparts. The lower cost of ownership (service, fuel etc) usually makes up for this after 4-5 years but this depends on your circumstances.
I agree to a certain extent though if the government were serious they'd increase the grant but it's probably better to spend money on the charging infrastructure at this point we need a lot of on street chargers before we can even think about a full transition to EVs only
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I think that the plug-in car grant is over-generous and should be scrapped. I don't think that it incentivises people to buy EVs, but does allow manufacturers to keep their prices artificially high. In fact, "Honest John found that 41% of motorists remain unaware of the £3,000 EV discount scheme.". Maybe a scheme that removes VAT from EVs , like in Norway, would be easier for most to interpret.
The people that can afford to buy a new EV outright are probably going to buy one with or without the grant anyway. For others working within tighter budgets or not wishing to spend their capital all at once, the lease or PCP figures can effectively mask the grant amount in the monthly payments.
The people that can afford to buy a new EV outright are probably going to buy one with or without the grant anyway. For others working within tighter budgets or not wishing to spend their capital all at once, the lease or PCP figures can effectively mask the grant amount in the monthly payments.
You could argue thats kinda the point? Depends how you look at it.
You could view it as a scheme to make expensive EV's more affordable for the consumer, or you could view it from the other side, and see it as a subsidy to the manufacturer to help them make a bit more profit on something that either has razor thin margins or is simply plain unprofitable, in the hope that it gets the ball rolling, gets people buying and gets production up, which in turn eventually brings economies of scale.
I guess both sides work together, but you just need to remember its not just one sided.
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Hey Jeff, our initial budget was also £20k.
If you can't find something you like at that price, maybe what we did could work for you. We identified that we will save something like £1500 per year on fuel, VED, etc. and used that saving to justify spending an extra £4k to get the car we wanted as that would pay itself back inside the 5 or more years we plan to keep the car. So in the end we spent £24k but got the car we wanted.
Of course, if you had to borrow the extra cash, you'd need to subtract interest from your savings.
That's it exactly. It's putting money into the system to get things moving. Government has limited levers it can pull in terms of taxes and incentives. Sure you could have more creative solutions; I think the loans system available Scotland is a good example, but something is better than nothing.
EVs are a challenge for most consumers, especially for small cars that are cheap to run. For under £10k you can get a two year old, low mileage Skoda Fabia estate, which is a great car, from a dealer forecourt... I'm trading ours in on Monday for the e-Niro. Cars like this are not just cheap to buy, they're cheap to run. Based on current mileage and fuel costs the Niro will likely halve our fuel costs, which is great, but it doesn't come close to offsetting the price of an EV. A fairer comparison would be a Zoe, but the point still stands. That £10-15k price premium over our Fabia when it was new is still an awful lot of petrol miles.
A big lever government could pull is the tax on petrol and diesel which is arguably too cheap. Actually given the prevalence of "tractor runs" I've encountered in rural Northern Ireland I'd make red diesel £18 per litre... but I digress. These sorts of changes can lead to public revolt.
I think the government have been hoping to put enough in to help grow/prove the market and therefore create a second hand market that makes all this much more possible. That and the stick of ending ice sales in 2030.... I'm quite sure we'll see fuel prices start to rise as people need more stick as well as the carrot of better options.
Then again I'm not an economist and have no idea what I'm talking about.
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To the OP - not being rude, but if a little bit of criticism, and/or leg pulling, is enough to make you leave this well-informed encyclopedia of knowledge, then trying to buy a "value" EV is going to literally make your head explode. Sorry !
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I'd suggest you might be eminently qualified to join their ranks
What, and give the one sane opinion that'll be lost in all of the others?I'd suggest you might be eminently qualified to join their ranks
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