10:16 am, August 27, 2025
EV sales are currently stuck in a ‘holding pattern’ as a result of ‘confusion’ around the government’s new Electric Car Grant.
That is according to Auto Trader’s Ian Plummer, who has been discussing the impact of the recently introduced Government legislation.
Appearing on a recent episode of Car Dealer Live, Plummer said the announcement initially brought positivity, with searches for EVs rising in the immediate aftermath.
However, as the details of the grant began to become clearer, consumer behaviours began to change, leading to major headaches for dealers and manufacturers.
Plummer, Auto Trader’s commercial director, told Car Dealer: ‘The impact has been pretty strong in terms of boosting visibility of EVs and boosting consumers’ appetite for them.
‘The day after the announcement, we saw a large boost of audience numbers looking at new electric cars and the share of the new market that was going towards electric ad views and leads jumped from around one in four to around a third, so there was big rise.
‘There was a doubling of interest in EVs under £37,000 so people had got the message that it was more likely to be the affordable product that was going to be incentivised and were putting their eyeballs and their clicks where those most relevant cars were.
“They definitely had a big boost of interest.’
‘Industry has been suffering a little bit from a negative fallout’
According to Plummer, the ‘initial first boost of positivity’ has been followed by ‘confusion’ and ‘disappointment’ as far as the automotive industry is concerned.
There remains a major lack of clarity over which cars will qualify for the full £3,750 grant, which is decided by a number of sustainability criteria.
As yet, no models have qualified for the top tier grant, leading to questions about whether the scheme is too complicated.
Plummer says that after the grant was launched, a number of customers cancelled EV orders in the hope of getting money off, with several yet to re-place them.
It has led to a ‘holding pattern’ in which interest in EVs has remained high, but uptake has stayed stubbornly low.
Plummer added: ‘The second factor that we’d call out though is that clearly the industry has been suffering a little bit from a negative fallout in many ways from that initial first boost of positivity because then there was the confusion about exactly what the sustainability criteria were and how you’d become eligible for ticking all three of the boxes that were put in front of manufacturers.
‘Nobody has ticked all three yet and that’s led to a little bit of annoyance that no one yet seems able to see a way to get up into the upper level of the £3,750 that’s available.
‘There are 24 models I believe [at time of recording] at the £1,500 level so that’s led to a little bit of confusion, disappointment and in all honesty – in practical terms – consumers sometimes cancelling some orders, thinking that they’ll wait for the grant to be confirmed and then put another order back in on the same car.
‘Some people are waiting to see how this plays out, looking at EVs on our platform and others not not necessarily translating that into an order. So that’s the second factor – we’re in a a little bit of a holding pattern.’
‘OEMs putting their hands in their pockets more than before’
Another conscience of the grant’s lack of clarity, has been manufacturers launching their own discount schemes to get customers into electric models.
The likes of Leapmotor, Vauxhall and GWM have all announced EV grants of their own and Plummer says customers can benefit from subsidies – even if they’re not coming from the Government.
He added: ‘The third key factor is that I think the Government’s announcement has had a great effect as an announcement than as an actual tangible policy just now.
‘What I mean by that is a whole host of brands – around 20 – have put their own form of grant in place.
‘Leapmotor did a brilliant job of hijacking the media interest in this just a couple of days afterwards by creating the “Leap Grant”.
‘We’ve seen the Leap Grant, the government grant and everything else since, whether you’re Vauxhall, GWM or whoever else you might be, you’ve got your own form of ECG that you’re subsidising.
‘What has happened is that the industry is probably putting their own hands in their pockets even more than they already were – the OEMs in particular – in order to try and surf on this positive wave of interest from consumers which is there but its not actually money that is coming from the government to the degree that I think everybody hoped’
