Budget 2020 for Motorists: Electric Car Grant CUT, but VED saving for ‘POSH’ EVs

The 2020 Budget by ‘just arrived’ Chancellor Rishi Sunak has some good news for motorists on VED, EVs, Fuel Duty and road repairs.

Rishi Sunak may have been Chancellor of the Exchequer for only five minutes – and the third Chancellor in a matter of months after Philip Hammond departed when Boris Johnson landed the top job, and Sajid Javid throwing in the towel when Dominic Cummings put him on a dog lead – but he managed a comprehensive, and confident, budget, a budget which focused on Coronavirus help and big borrowing for infrastructure (just infrastructure?), but had some decent news for motorists too.

Perhaps the biggest surprise – or maybe not considering the growing concerns over Covid-19 – was that, for the 10th year on the trot, the scheduled rise in fuel duty was not implemented. Which is a help, although the current drop in oil prices would have been a good opportunity to implement it without causing much pain.

Other good news, for EV buyers at least, is that the Plug-in Grant is to continue for another three years (it was due to end shortly) although it will be cut again from the current £3,500 to £3,000. It will also now not be available for EVs costing over £50,000.

But that scrapping of the grant for ‘posh’ EVs is mitigated to an extent by scrapping the VED supplement on electric cars costing over £40,000, saving buyers of expensive EVs (aren’t they all expensive?) the extra £320 a year they would otherwise have paid for five years.

There’s also a Pothole fund, with £500 million a year for the next five years promised to fill potholes on roads – enough, says Sunak, to fill 50 million potholes, although you may reckon there are that many in your town alone.

Elsewhere, there’s some £27 billion of tarmac and upgrades to go on across 4,000 miles of strategic roads, including stuff like the A66 Penine dualling, lower Thames crossing and work to get traffic away from Stonehenge.