Today's UK Budget Wants You To Buy An Electric Car

The UK Budget has brought good news for people buying plug-in cars, as well as investment in charging technologies and self-driving cars.

It’s not such good news for diesels, though, although you’d have to have been living in a cave not to have seen diesel road tax rates bumped up.

A £100 million extension to the plug-in car grant scheme means people will continue to get thousands of pounds off the price of a new plug-in car. Full-electric and plug-in hybrids will all qualify.

Another £100 million will go towards the charging infrastructure in the UK, funding the installation of charging points, while £40 million has been earmarked for research and development, apparently specifically including charging.

Chancellor Philip Hammond stated that he wants to put Britain at the pointy end of the global push towards new technologies, of which automated cars are collectively one facet.

Diesel’s days are clearly numbered, too, with most oil-burners currently on the road facing a higher road tax banding from the next tax year. A single-band rise will add about £20 to a typical annual bill.

Early reports say that it will certainly include everything up to and including Euro 5, with the various stages of Euro 6 causing some confusion at this stage as to whether they’ll be included or not.

Lorries and vans will be unaffected, which might seem bizarre since they pollute more per vehicle than cars, but it seems to be an attempt to keep inflation down. If delivery firms’ costs go up, the consumer suffers. Plus, there are not yet any viable alternatives to diesel for vans and lorries.

The silver lining is that fuel duty has been frozen again, so instead of paying what would have been about £1.50 per litre by now we’re still below £1.20. The continued halt makes this the longest fuel duty freeze for 40 years, although why there was ever an escalator built into it in the first place we have no idea.