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.
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.