Plug-In Car Grant: Eligible cars revealed

The Mitsubishi i-MiEV - The only EV you can buy

Government announces the list of cars eligible for the £5,000 electric vehicle subsidy. But there’s only one you can actually buy – the Mitsubishi i-MiEV.

We’re almost in to the New Year, and the contentious government subsidy for buyers of plug-in, low CO2 emission cars is due to kick in from 1st January 2011. The eligibility level is a spurious figure of less than 75g/km CO2 in emissions. Regardless of harmful emissions. Still, with car makers bending over backwards to hit ever lower emissions levels there will be loads of choice. Won’t there?

Actually, there are a total of nine cars on the list of eligible cars including stuff like the plug-in Toyota Prius and the Vauxhall Ampera. Sadly, neither of those two cars are actually on sale yet, and won’t be until 2012.

In fact, if you actually want to buy an eligible electric car in the New Year, it’s Hobson’s choice – the Mitsubishi i-Miev. It’s the only electric car you can actually buy from the list of nine cars and it will cost a not inconsiderable £24,000 even after the government (that’s you and me) chip in £5k.

But it could have been worse. Until Nissan decided to charge less for the Nissan LEAF than it costs to make – allegedly – Mitsubishi had decided to charge a commercial price for the i-Miev – £38,000. For a pocket-sized city car you can only drive safely for forty miles before you have to turn round and go home or you’ll run out of electricity. Shows just how commercial electric cars still are.

Thankfully – even though it’s still too much – the taxpayer investment in this scheme isn’t huge. The total grant money available only equates to 15,000 plug-in registrations a year, plus an extra £20 million for some more public recharging stations round the UK.

If only this was about real emissions we’d be happy. And we’d be even happier if EVs were a viable alternative to a normal car.

But they’re not.