12:48 pm, September 25, 2025
Money collected from ZEV mandate fines should be reinvested into government incentives to boost EV sales.
That is the novel approach but forward by the UK boss of Polestar who has labelled the current Electric Car Grant ‘a bit of a farce’.
Matt Galvin, the Swedish brand’s MD in the UK, made the comments during his recent appearance at Car Dealer Podcast Live.
During the show, talk soon turned to the the government’s Electric Car Grant, which has been largely criticised for being too complicated since it was announced earlier this year.
The issue does not impact Polestar, whose cars are priced above the £37,000 cap, but Galvin was quick to put forward some possible alternatives to the current set up.
While insisting that the grant is a good thing overall, he said that more needs to be done to support used EVs, amid a turbulent market for dealers.
On the subject of the grant, he said: ‘It’s a good idea, absolutely but it was executed terribly.
‘There was far too much confusion and kerfuffle for almost two months before it was really clear to consumers which cars it applied to and which cars it didn’t.
‘I’ve probably got a slightly different perspective on how they could have approached it. For me it’s about giving more people choice, in terms of their transition to an EV.
‘The used car market for EVs, I think it’s fair to say, has been challenging. With residual values plummeting, first adoption of those cars and ownership of those cars has been a really terrible experience.
‘The Netherlands did a thing recently where they supported used cars and actually in terms of adoption of electric cars, which is – if we believe in electric cars being part of a sustainable future – really important, that lower price point that a used car provides might have been a more interesting way to use some of that money.
‘Also of course there is the ZEV mandate fines – big fines for people that don’t comply – and that’s not taxpayer money. They could reinvest that in some kind of incentive which does do new and used cars or maybe it levels the VAT on charging for example.
‘There are lots of different things they could have done but I am an advocate of it. I think it’s a good thing. We do need to get on this journey of EV adoption. It’s not changing, it’s coming for all of us, and any way that we can smooth the transition is a good thing.’
The panel also discussed the impact of the grant on consumers, after Auto Trader admitted that EV sales had been left in a ‘holding pattern’ due to a lack of certainty.
Only a trickle of EVs qualified for discounts in the opening weeks of the scheme and Galvin says that a full list of cars should have been available from day one.
He added: ‘You would have thought the obvious thing would have been to do the preparation and the homework first so they could say “The grant’s here. These are the cars it applies to” from day one. That would have had far more traction.
‘What the industry saw was a stalling of consumers wanting to make that choice because quite obviously they are going to want to what the full list of cars is before they make that decision on their purchase.
‘There is definitely a big dip in consumers making that decision. It was a bit of a farce, it could have been done a lot better but we are where we are.’
The full episode of Car Dealer Podcast Live 2025 is now on Spotify or you can watch the entire show on YouTube. Galvin’s comments are available below:
