Nah, only kidding, the subsidy is for electric cars. Clean, green, quick, congestion-busting bicycles don't get £5k subsidies.
Drivers with plug in vehicles are set to benefit from a £37m funding package for home and on-street charging and for new charge points for people parking plug in vehicles at railway stations. That's according to a press release from the Department for Transport. Bicycles are vehicles in law but when the DfT talks about 'plug in vehicles' it only ever means electric cars and vans.
The DfT will provide 75 percent of the cost of installing new charge points, including for at-home use. This is on top of the £5000 subsidy offered to rich buyers of electric cars (White E-Van Man can claim £8000). Despite such sweeteners, sales of electric cars are far below predictions and the rich car industry is urging the Government to provide even more fat grants.
The £37m funding for the package comes from the Government’s £400m commitment to increase the uptake of ultra low emission vehicles (remember, cars not bikes) and is available until April 2015.
Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin is in Sunderland today, visiting Nissan which is making the Leaf electric car. He said: "This investment underlines the Government’s commitment to making sure that the UK is a world leader in the electric car industry. Plug in vehicles can help the consumer by offering a good driving experience and low running costs. They can help the environment by cutting pollution. And most importantly of all, they can help the British economy by creating skilled manufacturing jobs in a market that is bound to get bigger.”
Bound to get bigger? Even if it triples in size it would still be tiny. As of 31 December 2012, only 3200 claims had been made for the Plug-in Car and Plug-in Van grants. The massive Government investment in public infrastructure for electric cars and vans is not given a second thought. What about a massive Government investment for purchasers of the real pollution busters, bicycles? And as e-cars are the same size as standard cars, flooding the streets with e-cars (only a fantasy so far) will do exactly nothing to reduce congestion. Mad, really.
Advertisement
Add a new comment
You need to be logged in to post comments. If you do not have an account then please register.
Comments
3 comments
Grrrr. You're dead right Carlton. My blog http://cleanairmiles.com/ looked at this a month or so back - might be worth a read... The problem with existing subsidies for EVs is that they tend to favor the very wealthy because EVs are so expensive in the first place. Even Fox News takes on the language of the Occupy Wall Street movement in criticising US EV subsidies: ‘This time however, billions in federal subsidies for electric vehicles are going those who need them the least: the 1 percent.’ james
James FitzGerald Feb 19th 2013 at 1:51PM
0 0Yet another dead end solution! Electric is only clean at one end, the other end has to generate the power somehow and with increased use of electric we can only do it with subsidized nuclear energy (which I think is the Government plan all along). There must be loads of space at Westminster perhaps they wouldn't mind storing the waste there?
David Beacham Feb 22nd 2013 at 11:13AM
0 0There has been a low take up of subsidy. Electric cars have high battery replacement costs circa 19k. There range is comparitvely low and they take a long time to charge. The government would have been better encouraging people to buy electric bikes. There range can be up to 100 miles though an average range is around 30 miles. They are cheaper to run and take a maximum of 6 hours to charge from flat via a normal mains electric socket. Around 25% of people live within 5 miles of work yet commute by car imagine how nice it would be to have cleaner air in our communities. The average cost of an electric bike is around £1000 for £2000 you could get a Bosch powered model which is less than half the cost of the amount currently offered for people buying electric cars. Electric cars are more of a gimic. My suggestion would be to put the money in developing electric bikes in the UK plus money off new electric bikes. In Germany 400,000 electric bikes were sold and it would be a great opportunity to develop more manufacturing in the UK!
David Wood Feb 22nd 2013 at 1:03PM
0 1