Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of financial incentives provided by the electric car grant before its withdrawal.

The Government’s approach to supporting the uptake of electric cars is clearly working – while the Government slowly reduced the grant over time, the sale of electric vehicles soared. The sales of fully electric cars grew from less than 1,000 in 2011 to almost 100,000 in the first 5 months of 2022 alone.

An independent report commissioned by the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles to assess the impact of the grant scheme, found that the grant has had a material impact on demand for new EVs, but also that the importance of it has reduced as the market has matured and price has become less of a barrier to vehicle uptake.