£5000 incentive to buy an Electric Car – but not until 2011

A £5,000 subsidy on Electric Cars is being offered by the UK Government from 2011

We still don’t know for certain that the Government will launch a scrappage scheme in the budget (or Cash for Clunkers if you’re on the other side of the pond) but in a slightly bizarre twist the Government has announced that it will subsidise the purchase of Electric Cars or Plug-in Hybrids to the tune of £5,000 from 2011. Whoopee!!

This scheme is probably less tenable than the whole Vauxhall Ampera ‘Wing and a Prayer’ plans. The Ampera at least has a chance of coming to the market with something close to what is being offered, although a chunk of the plans are still based on yet to be developed technology. Same issues surround the Tesla S Saloon car, which is offering the world for peanuts, with precious little chance of being able to deliver the goods. More credible is Koenigsegg’s plans for the Quant Electric Car, as they at least are not trying to bring new technology to their cars on an unrealistic budget.

But just how practical or ‘Green’ is this proposal? It’s already reckoned that your cheapo mini Electric Car (thing G Whiz) produces the equivalent of 100g/km of Co2 with the environmental cost of the electricity production to power the cars. What more powerful cars will cost is really just guesswork, but the claim that electric cars are zero emission is plainly wrong.

And what about the infrastructure to power these cars? You can bet your boots it will quickly be made illegal to charge a car from a domestic socket, whatever the intentions of the car makers. Does anyone really think that the Government is going to forego fuel duty on electric cars? Not a chance. So you’ll have to toddle off to a yet to be built charging station and sit around while your new, subsidised electric car gets charged. Oh, goody.

And there’s little chance that this Government will be in power in 2011. So if the Conservatives can the project, which they surely should, then Labour can claim the moral high ground. In the meantime the incentive scheme polishes the Labour Party’s green credentials (as long as you don’t actually think the thing through).

Now if they’d taken the lead from the Governator and planned to help the development of Hydrogen Cars I could see the intent was good.

Sorry, but this is political fluff, not cohesive plans.