UK's £5000 ($7600) EV Incentive Has Strings Attached

Makes sense to me. If they're concerned about pollution they want cars that don't burn gas. PHEVs and RE-EVs become pure gas cars on long trips. The minimum warranty may be intended to assure that only mainstream cars get the tax break.

Of course, you could make arguments for giving tax breaks to PHEVs, but you cannot reasonably argue that a PHEV is an EV. This sounds like a boost for EVs.

And rather than thinking of this as the Nissan Leaf incentive, you could think of it as an incentive for more companies to build real EVs. Note that any of the EVs from major companies in the 1990's would have qualified, were they to be sold in the UK now.

 

Maybe they don't want to give the GBP5,000 tax break to small, low-speed electric cars like the Xebra that cost less than GBP10,000, or super-expensive cars like the Tesla Roadster that only rich people can buy. Maybe they want to encourage full EVs that use no gas at all, that can go on the freeways and go as far as most people drive in a day, and that are in the price range of normal families. The 3-year warranty does not exclude the Prius, but makes sure that only cars of high enough quality that the manufacturer is willing to stand behind them, are included.

I understand your desire to get the tax break on the car you like. But the plug-in Prius with a 13-mile EV range is a gasoline car that uses a little bit of electricity. Even the Volt, if it got 25 miles on EV and 25 mpg in CS mode, would burn the same amount of gasoline on a 50-mile drive as a present-day Prius does!

The time for giving tax breaks to gas-electric hybrids is over. We need to promote EVs, in order to get enough of them on the road that private entrepreneurs will see a profit from opening up charging stations in places the big companies do not cover. Better Place is not going to have a swap station on the two-lane road from Podunk to Padumunk, but if there are enough EVs on the road, Billy Joe, who runs the gas station on that road will decide he can make money with a charging post next to his gas pumps.