Sales of electric vehicles slump after cut in subsidy caused by high demand

April registrations of new purchases fall after incentive is reduced by £500 due to popularity

ELECTRIC vehicle sales have slumped to their lowest in eight months after the Government cut grants for new buyers.

Registrations for April showed electric vehicles made up 6.5 per cent of new purchases, down from 16.5 per cent in December. The decline comes after the subsidy to buy an electric car was cut from £3,000 to £2,500 in March, following high demand.

Drivers are being encouraged by ministers to convert to purely electric vehicles ahead of the coming ban on the sale of new petrol or diesel cars in 2030.

However, the uptake, while growing steadily, remains relatively slow with the RAC saying there are around only 80,000 private purely battery-powered cars on the roads out of around 32 million vehicles. The figures published yesterday by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) showed that of the 141,583 new vehicles bought in April 9,152 were electric.

While last month’s electric car sales were a more than 500 per cent increase on the 1,374 sold last April, when dealerships were closed due to lockdown, it represented the lowest percentage of overall sales since August.

April’s electric car sales are also down on the average for 2021 so far, which has been 7.5 per cent.

The SMMT said the slump meant purchases of new plug-in hybrid cars, the sale of which is also due to be banned in 2035, outstripped purely battery vehicles last month.

A spokesman said: “Unusually, plugin hybrids, at 6.8 per cent of the market, were more popular than battery electric vehicles at 6.5 per cent, following cuts to the Plug-in Car Grant.”

The SMMT said it is now downgrad- ing its forecasts for overall electric car sales for 2021 from 9.3 per cent of all purchases to 8.9 per cent.

As well as the cut in the grant drivers can claim for new electric vehicles, the Department for Transport also reduced the maximum price of vehicles it can be used for from £50,000 to £30,000.

This means many of the most popular models are not eligible, such as the Tesla Model 3, which starts from around £40,000. However, ministers argued the overall funding for new electric vehicle grants has not changed, the money is now being targeted at lower cost cars to make purchases more affordable for the average driver.

The Government has pledged an overall package of £2.8billion to accelerate the take-up of electric cars, which includes £350 grants for drivers to install charging points at home.

Yesterday, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps hailed the progress being made on electric car sales saying that around 500,000 had been sold in the UK in total, including fleet vehicles.

The cabinet minister, who drives a Tesla Model 3, extolled the virtues of electric by saying they were much cheaper to run.

In a Twitter video, he said: “In only eight and a half years everyone will have to be driving electric and now is a great time to start.

“They are very, very inexpensive to run because it would take me probably only £7 to drive from London to Manchester in an electric vehicle.”