UK electric car goals unachievable without purchase incentives

Calls for the return of electric car sales incentives have come from across the industry this week, yet the most important voice of all remains silent. The government has mandated that 22% of new car sales must be electric in 2024 - but it's doing precious little to support this aim. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the boss of Britain’s biggest car seller and even the House of Lords have called for incentives to spur demand for EVs within a private market that as a whole dropped 16% year on year in January. Measures suggested have included a cut in VAT on the purchase of new EVs from 20% to 10% and a targeted return of the Plug-in Car Grant towards smaller and cheaper EVs; as well as other potential support, such as cutting the VAT rate on public charging from 20% to 5% and an extension of the EV-favouring benefit-in-kind tax rates. Incentives for EVs made for the dominant topic in our Autocar Business Live webinar this week, which you can watch now on demand here. Stellantis’s UK sales boss Eurig Druce said that such speculation on a return of incentives and the silence that meets it breeds uncertainty, as potential buyers risk delaying their purchase in the hope of getting some imminent assistance from the government. (Although when is there every certainty around the new car market these days?) Druce said the government’s strategy around EVs isn't a 360deg one, compelling supply of EVs but not demand. This means there are two ways of achieving it: cutting supply of ICE cars to artificially boost the sale of EVs or by selling your way to success. Clearly the latter is the desirable outcome, but it’s much harder to do. One of the people on the frontline of selling cars is Vertu Motors CEO Robert Forrester – someone who doesn’t pull punches. He told Autocar Business Live that without incentives there's no chance of the ZEV mandate succeeding in 2024, let alone EV sales growing to 80% by 2030. He can’t fathom why the UK's target is so far ahead of the EU's in what is an ultimately integrated industry. His view is that the government will see that the policy isn't working and in time row back on it and in the meantime doesn't have the capital or the willpower to support the policy financially. There is a growing sense that the industry feels collectively cheesed off with the government over its inability to properly back its own policies and legislation. Watch: How to sell cars in 2024 - Autocar Business Live Private buyers clearly need financial incentives to go electric (Druce said there’s emphatic evidence the previous Plug-in Car Grant helped turn the dial); even the most EV-friendly car makers say they need help to sell these cars; and dealers can’t understand why there has been such an intervention in the first place and consider it unwelcome. The government’s silence is becoming deafening.