Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to the news story entitled Plug-in grant for cars to end as focus moves to improving electric vehicle charging, published by his Department on 14 June 2022, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of removing electric car subsidies on the transition to electric vehicles.

The Government’s approach to supporting the uptake of electric cars is clearly working – while the Government slowly reduced the grant over time, the sale of electric vehicles soared. The Plug-in Car Grant has had significant impacts on building the early electric car market, which is now maturing. The sales of fully electric cars grew from less than 1,000 in 2011 to almost 100,000 in the first 5 months of 2022 alone. Although still important, price is no longer the paramount barrier to adoption of electric cars.

An independent report commissioned by the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles to assess the impact of the grant scheme, found that the grant has had a material impact on demand for new electric cars, but also that the importance of it has reduced as the market has matured and price has become less of a barrier to vehicle uptake.