Official Plug In Car Grant (PICG) Thread

MichaelJHunt said:
It is a gift. You are still missing the point.

If you can afford to look at a car costing £32,000 you should not be given £1,500 of tax payer money to buy it.

If you will recall, the government was originally giving £4,500 to people buying Tesla Model S cars costing in the excess of £100,000. Total and complete nonsense.

IMHO. Clearly others think the government giving away huge gifts to already relatively wealthy people is a good idea.
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No, it's not a gift, it's a policy tool in the same way that no business rates etc. if manufacturers set up in certain areas are policy tools to bring business and employment into areas identified as requiring investment.

Governments spend taxpayers money in many and varied ways (including £500k the other month to consultancies to improve Richie Sunak's image) but none of these are gifts, rather incentives to ensure that government policies and/or targets are met and some will benefit, some won't. The difference with the PICG is that it wasn't hundreds of millions aimed at a single large multi-national (would Honda have set up in Swindon or Nissan in Northumberland without huge government grants? No, of course not) but it was open to all, thus was a visible 'benefit' to those that took advantage of it (including I am sure, yourself), but the ultimate beneficiary is still the government.

A gift would be the PICG money but without a policy to improve EV takeup and lower the county's overall emissions behind it.
 
Gomev said:
@JohnInFrance How much is the incentive in France and is the government target equally over ambitious for EV take up there ?
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Originally it was 7000€ (or 23% if the car is so cheap that the grant is more than 23% of it's value - e.g. the Dacia Spring) for a car up to 45,000€, then halves up to 60k and after that, nothing, and it reduces by 1000€ each year (at the end of June) until it reaches 0.

This year it was 6k. So for orders from July 1st this year it will be 5k up to 45k and 2.5k from 45-60k etc.

The targets here are ambitious, but there has been a huge take up on Zoes (mainly by companies because of the generous grants and, as in the UK, low/0 taxes), so numbers look good on the face of things but they still will likely not meet them, just as the UK won't, but nobody's talking about that yet in either country.
 
BugEyed said:
It'll never fly, there's no way to differentiate between someone charging an EV and Granny trying to keep warm. Road pricing on the other hand.
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Oh but there is. Recognising any given devices' power usage signature is fairly trivial and I can forsee a time when that information is supplied by the manufacturer. Combined with an update to smart meter software, 'they' will - in theory at least - be able to tax any given device at whatever rate, and even worse they will be able to tax locally generated power (solar/wind).
 
MowerMan65 said:
Oh but there is. Recognising any given devices' power usage signature is fairly trivial and I can forsee a time when that information is supplied by the manufacturer. Combined with an update to smart meter software, 'they' will - in theory at least - be able to tax any given device at whatever rate, and even worse they will be able to tax locally generated power (solar/wind).
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You don’t need a “Smart” meter to charge your car.

Your Solar/Wind System doesn’t have to be connected to the grid. No way the Government can tax electricity from your own solar/wind system.
 
MichaelJHunt said:
You don’t need a “Smart” meter to charge your car.

Your Solar/Wind System doesn’t have to be connected to the grid. No way the Government can tax electricity from your own solar/wind system.
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True you don't NEED one but you'll be paying standard unit rates for power if you don't. Even now with ridiculous pricing, you can get 4.5p per Kwh overnight. That differential will be maintained for the forseeable future no matter what happens with wholesale prices, until the grid demand is evened out completely. That won't happen any time soon (although with V2G it will happen eventually).

Unless you live off grid with no incoming power at all, your grid smart meter absolutely CAN 'see' your solar installation - in the same way as your phone can 'see' the Chromecast on your home WiFi. You don't have to communicate with it to know that it's there. The possibility exists that ALL devices may be REQUIRED to be smart and talk to each other. That means your solar inverter will tell your smart meter about power delivered.

It's a forgone conclusion that the government will find a way to replace the lost revenue from fuel tax.

I expect those solutions to be quite creative, and extremely hard to work around.

I hope I'm wrong, but I wouldn't bet on it.
 
MowerMan65 said:
True you don't NEED one but you'll be paying standard unit rates for power if you don't. Even now with ridiculous pricing, you can get 4.5p per Kwh overnight. That differential will be maintained for the forseeable future no matter what happens with wholesale prices, until the grid demand is evened out completely. That won't happen any time soon (although with V2G it will happen eventually).

Unless you live off grid with no incoming power at all, your grid smart meter absolutely CAN 'see' your solar installation - in the same way as your phone can 'see' the Chromecast on your home WiFi. You don't have to communicate with it to know that it's there. The possibility exists that ALL devices may be REQUIRED to be smart and talk to each other. That means your solar inverter will tell your smart meter about power delivered.

It's a forgone conclusion that the government will find a way to replace the lost revenue from fuel tax.

I expect those solutions to be quite creative, and extremely hard to work around.

I hope I'm wrong, but I wouldn't bet on it.
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You don’t need to be totally off-grid in your home. But there is no reason your solar/wind system needs to be connected to the grid. Battery storage systems can capture power generated off-grid for use around the home on their own circuits and to further charge your car.

I suspect it will be easier for the government to recover its cash loss based on mileage driven, rather than trying to work out where you get your electricity from and when you are/are not charging your car.

I also think that the current low rates for night charging will not be around in a few years time when many homes will be charging their BEV(s).

The fact that people can generate their own electricity makes it a harder play for the government taxing “filling up” compared to ICE fuel where everyone had to fill up at a fuel station.

 
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MichaelJHunt said:
So this is a political forum?

Can’t think of any political “element” in my decision to buy EVs over many years.
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So you don't think that there's any politics in the recently withdrawn grants for EV purchase and charge point installation, or the lack of taxation on electricity when used as fuel and taxation benefits for EVs as company cars?
 
BugEyed said:
So you don't think that there's any politics in the recently withdrawn grants for EV purchase and charge point installation, or the lack of taxation on electricity when used as fuel and taxation benefits for EVs as company cars?
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Nope. None of that affected my decisions.
 
I made a comment not for a debate but it will be interesting if it had any truth in it.

I'll leave it at that and watch the world go by as it seems to have divided opinions.

But yes the "discount" that was in effect last year helped my decision to buy an ev.

We arent all filthy rich.
 
MichaelJHunt said:
So this is a political forum?

Can’t think of any political “element” in my decision to buy EVs over many years.
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Politics has led to the removal of the EV grant. So that’s £1,500 more on all EVs over £30k.
Politics affects the amount of funding that goes towards public charging.
Politics led to the zeroing of VAT on solar.
Politics affects the amount of tax we pay on EVs.
Politics affects most things in our lives.
This forum doesn’t exclude political discussions unless they are so off topic that they are not appropriate here.
 
Stuart Wright said:
Politics has so much influence on EV ownership that I think this forum inevitably has to have a political element.
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You can claim politics plays a part in everything. In reality it plays no greater part of ev ownership than it does in ice ownership, or shopping, or going out for a drink, or owning/renting a house....or anything else. Discuss it if you want.... Or don't if you don't want to. I just don't agree that the forum HAS to have a political element.
 
MowerMan65 said:
Oh but there is. Recognising any given devices' power usage signature is fairly trivial and I can forsee a time when that information is supplied by the manufacturer. Combined with an update to smart meter software, 'they' will - in theory at least - be able to tax any given device at whatever rate, and even worse they will be able to tax locally generated power (solar/wind).
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I agree that it's theoretically possible. But the reality is that the Government have made a huge mess of the "smart" meter rollout and will take an awfully long time to achieve even 90% coverage. I cannot see people accepting only some people being taxed for road usage of EVs, but instead people choosing to add intermediate devices to hide the usage characteristics would be widespread.
 
MichaelJHunt said:
You don’t need a “Smart” meter to charge your car.

Your Solar/Wind System doesn’t have to be connected to the grid. No way the Government can tax electricity from your own solar/wind system.
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Simplest way is to tax EV's on the miles they do. It would be horrendous but would I guess be fair to tax the people that use the roads more, same with most things in life. If you drink a lot of beer you get Taxed in the price, if you don't drink that beer you never pay the tax
 
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Personally I would never have bought my MG5 SR unless I had bought it through the affinity and got the grant, that made an over 26k plus car down to 21k, for me around the 20-25k mark is my max. I would have just kept or bought another petrol until the EV prices came down. I could have afforded it however I don't have enough spare cash to justify spending another 10k for an EV.

I honestly cannot understand why people spend 80k or so on cars. You'd have to be a millionaire in my opinion to justify that much spare cash to be spent on an item that does the same job pretty much as a 20k car. From A to B.
 
BugEyed said:
So you don't think that there's any politics in the recently withdrawn grants for EV purchase and charge point installation, or the lack of taxation on electricity when used as fuel and taxation benefits for EVs as company cars?
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MichaelJHunt said:
Nope. None of that affected my decisions.
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So something's only political when it affects your decision making directly. Glad we got that sorted out.

Anyway, back to the grant withdrawal debate....
 
BugEyed said:
But the reality is that the Government have made a huge mess of the "smart" meter rollout and will take an awfully long time to achieve even 90% coverage.
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Let’s look at the smart metering mess for a minute !.
You can’t make up this type of stuff !.
The amount of money wasted on the roll out is staggering beyond belief.
Just watch this recent video on the subject !.

 
Stuart Wright said:
Politics has so much influence on EV ownership that I think this forum inevitably has to have a political element.
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Totally agree, politics influences most of our lives and the effects of policy decisions should be discussed, however I was referring to political posts that are simply political bias with no relevance or plain old slurs, such as post #32. (no personal malice intended to the poster whatsoever)
These can lead down into a bear pit.
 
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