Although the plug-in car grant scheme to new orders has been closed, certain wheelchair-accessible vehicles (WAVs) are eligible for a grant of £2,500.
The grant is available providing the wheelchair accessible vehicle – excluding the cost of conversion – costs less than £35,000, produces no exhaust emissions and can cover at least 70 miles per charge.
However, only 1,000 of these grants are available per year, so you once they have been allocated, no more will become available until the following year.
Up until now, the plug-in car grant has helped to increase sales of fully electric cars over the last 11 years from less than 1,000 in 2011 to nearly 100,000 in the first half of 2022.
Electric car sales have risen by 70% in the last year, which is around 1 in 6 new cars on the roads and battery and hybrid electric vehicles (EVs) now make up more than half of all new cars sold.
Though the plug-in car grant was deemed temporary from the outset, electric car sales continue to increase. As such, £300 million grant funding is to be used towards extending plug-in grants to boost sales of plug-in wheelchair accessible vehicles, taxis, motorcycles, vans and trucks.
The plug-in wheelchair accessible vehicle grant (PiWG) can be claimed by new WAVs at first registration. Although preregistration conversions are eligible to apply for the grant scheme, post-registration conversions are not.
The base vehicle needs to meet certain criteria to claim the PiWG, and WAV convertors cannot apply directly for a vehicle to be listed as eligible. This must happen through the manufacturers themselves.