The Office of Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) will start a review of the plug-in car grant, once today’s General Election has passed.
As it stands the current scheme operates similar to the old scheme; eligible ULEVs are entitled to a government subsidy of up to £5000. The notable difference being that cars cars now qualify for 35% off the basic price of the car instead of 25%.
OLEV has said that in May (post General Election) they will be reviewing this and introducing 3 grant categories for cars, differentiating between ULEVs on the basis of their CO2 emissions and their zero emission range. The categories are as follows:
Category 1: CO2 emissions of less than 50g/km and a zero emission range of at least 70 miles
Category 2: CO2 emissions of less than 50g/km and a zero emission range between 10 and 69 miles
Category 3: CO2 emissions of 50-75g/km and a zero emission range of at least 20 miles
OLEV has committed to retain the £5,000 grant until 50,000 claims had been made and £200 million has been committed to supporting the plug-in car grant until 2020.
Once the 50,000 mark has been exceeded the new divisions listed above will be enforced and new levels of grant will be available per category. The size of these subsidies could very well depend on who is in office after today.
So far there have been over 25,000 plug-in grant claims since the scheme began in 2011.
