Nine electric cars eligible for £5,000 grant – only one can be driven away

The Mitsubishi i-MiEV is the only electric car eligible for a £5,000 grant that can be bought and driven away when the scheme launches next month, according to a list released by the government this week. The remaining cars on the list are available only to lease or have yet to go on sale.

The government has committed £43m towards the plug-in car grant – enough to subsidise 8,600 cars. And whilst many of the new electric cars promised over the next 18 months are not yet available to buy, it is hoped that the early introduction of the grants will provide an incentive to manufacturers and customers alike.

Worth the wait

A spokesperson for the Environmental Transport Association (ETA) said: “Many of these vehicles are not conventional cars that have been converted to run on battery power, but new designs built from the ground up as electric cars and as a result will be worth the wait.”

What about the Tesla Roadster?

It has been reported that the reason the only electric car currently on sale in Britain does not appear on the government’s list of cars eligible for the £5,000 grant is that Tesla did not submit their application form in time. However, a cynic might suspect the government wanted to side-step embarrassing headlines about its grant being used to subsidise expensive supercars by delaying any mention of the £90,000 Tesla Roadster until more modest vehicles were available to buy…

Electric car infrastructure

As part of the Plugged-In Places scheme, the Midlands, Greater Manchester, East of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland will provide over 4,000 charging points using a shared government funding pot of £20 million.
London narrowly missed out on the opportunity of subsidised charging points when the Olympic committee rejected Nissan’s bid to supply the official cars for the event. The company would have supplied 2000 Nissan LEAF electric cars and as part of the deal, electricity supplier EDF would have helped install charging points across the capital. An offer of £40m in sponsorship secured the deal for BMW.