The Volkswagen ID 4 and ID 5 are now eligible for the Electric Car Grant (ECG), with a discount of £1500 applied to certain variants.
The grant is available on Pure Essential, Pure Match and Pro Essential versions of the electric SUVs and prices now start from £35,495 for the entry-level variant.
The eligible models are available with a choice of a 168bhp single-motor powertrain or a 282bhp twin-motor arrangement, depending on trim, and either a 52kWh battery giving 221 miles of range or a 77kWh unit offering up to 339 miles.
Volkswagen now has three electric cars eligible for the ECG, which applies to EVs priced at less than £37,000. Its ID 3 hatchback was added to the scheme in the summer and is now priced from less than £30,000.
Eligibility is determined using a set of technical and sustainability criteria outlined by the UK government, which largely hinge around the environmental credentials of the car’s main components – taking into account the impact of sourcing, production and shipping.
There are two levels of grant offered and 38 EVs have so far been confirmed as eligible, but of those, so far the Ford Puma Gen-E and Ford E-Tourneo Courier are the only cars to have been awarded the higher, £3750 discount.
The addition of two new big-selling electric cars to the scheme (the ID 4 was the UK’s 10th most popular last year) comes shortly after the government’s appointment of a new decarbonisation minister with a remit to drive electric vehicle uptake.
Selby MP Keir Mather – at 27, the youngest cabinet minister in 200 years – has been named under-secretary of state at the Department for Transport, with responsibility for EVs and decarbonisation, effectively taking over from Lilian Greenwood, who has moved into a new position at the DfT.
In this capacity, Mather will be closely involved with any development of the ECG scheme and the UK’s zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate, and has told Autocar the government is committed to continuing recent growth in the EV market.
“We want your next car to be electric,” he said. “Over a million electric cars are already on our roads and that number’s rising fast following action from this government.”
He cited September’s record EV sales – more than 70,000 were sold last month – as proof of the ECG’s effectiveness, with the government claiming more than 20,000 of those sales were ECG-subsidised.
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