Electric Car Grant after record EV sales: will £1.95bn last to 2030?

The UK registered a record 99,199 new battery electric cars in September, and the industry body SMMT named the government’s Electric Car Grant as one of the reasons. So will the £1.95bn scheme, worth up to £3,750 a car, last until its official end date of 31 March 2030? On our rough sums, that depends less on how many people buy than on how many get the full £3,750 rather than £1,500.

The grant launched on 16 July 2025 with £650m and was originally due to run until 31 March 2029 unless the money ran out first (Pod Energy). We could find no published Department for Transport (DfT) figure for spending to date, so this analysis works from the DfT’s count of grant-backed sales.

How much money is in the Electric Car Grant?

About £1.95bn in total, often rounded to £2bn. In her November 2025 Budget, Rachel Reeves said the government was “providing £1.3 billion additional funding for the electric car grant, extending it to 2030” (Motor Trade News). The scheme now runs until 31 March 2030, the end of the 2029/30 financial year, or until the funding is used up (Auto Express).

Date	What happened	Money
16 July 2025	Grant launched at £3,750 (Band 1) or £1,500 (Band 2)	£650m
November 2025	Budget extends the end date from March 2029 to March 2030	+£1.3bn
Late April 2026	DfT says 100,000 drivers have used the grant
July 2026	DfT says more than 140,000 sales were supported in year one	about £1.95bn in total
28 October 2026	Autumn Budget	next chance to change funding or rules

The basic rules are simple. A car must cost £37,000 or less, although higher-spec versions up to £42,000 still qualify if a version with the same battery and motor costs £37,000 or less, and the band depends on how green the government judges each model’s production to be (Auto Express). Our guide to who qualifies for the Electric Car Grant covers the criteria in full.

How fast is the money being spent?

The grant had passed 100,000 drivers by late April 2026, the DfT said (Renewable Energy Magazine) and more than 140,000 sales by the scheme’s first birthday in July, with 58 models now eligible (Fleet News).

The pace picked up. The first 100,000 took about nine and a half months, an average of roughly 10,600 a month. The next 40,000 came in around 11 weeks, which is closer to 190,000 a year if sustained.

What that cost depends on the split between bands, for which we found no published figure:

• If every one of the 140,000 got £1,500, year one cost £210m, or 11% of the pot.
• If every one got £3,750, it cost £525m, or 27% of the pot.

That leaves somewhere between £1.43bn and £1.74bn to cover the three years and eight months from July 2026 to the end of March 2030.

Did September’s record drain the pot?

Not as much as the headline suggests. The SMMT said battery electric registrations rose 36.3% to 99,199, a 28.3% market share, with 454,945 registered in the first nine months of 2026. It credited wider choice in smaller cars, strong discounts and the grant. Our September EV sales report has the full breakdown.

A large slice of those cars got no grant at all. The scheme’s scoring of carbon from vehicle assembly and battery production rules out China-built cars (Electric Car Scheme), so none of BYD’s record 20,129 September registrations (BYD UK) drew on the pot. Several of those brands offer their own DIY grants instead.

For scale, 140,000 grants in 12 months set against 454,945 EV registrations in nine months shows that grant-backed sales are still a minority of the market. Carmakers’ own discounting, as they chase their targets under the ZEV mandate, also played a big part in September, and that is carmakers’ money, not the Treasury’s.

Will the grant run out before March 2030?

Our rough sums assume the full £1.95bn goes to grants and can be drawn at any pace (we found no published year-by-year split), starting from July 2026. We test two speeds: the first year’s 140,000 a year, and 200,000 a year, slightly faster than the spring pace.

Average grant per car	Spent in year one	Left from July 2026	At 140,000 grants a year	At 200,000 grants a year
£1,500 (all Band 2)	£210m	£1.74bn	Lasts beyond March 2030	Lasts beyond March 2030
£2,625 (half in each band)	£368m	£1.58bn	Lasts beyond March 2030	Runs out around mid-2029
£3,750 (all Band 1)	£525m	£1.43bn	Runs out around spring 2029	Runs out around mid-2028

At the first year’s pace with a half-and-half mix, the money lasts, but with only about seven months to spare. If demand keeps accelerating, the same mix runs dry about eight months early. The worst case, with everyone on £3,750 at 200,000 grants a year, ends the scheme almost two years ahead of schedule.

The band mix is the swing factor, and it is partly in the government’s hands, because it decides which models sit in which band. Every model that moves into Band 1 makes each sale two and a half times as expensive for the Treasury.

Which cars get the full £3,750?

Band 1 includes selected versions of the Renault 5, the Renault 4 with the 52kWh battery, the Renault Scenic E-Tech, Alpine A290, MINI Countryman Electric (65.2kWh), Nissan Leaf and selected Ford Puma Gen-E versions (Motoring Research). Hyundai’s Kona Electric qualifies too, and so does every version of the Hyundai Ioniq 3, which opened for UK orders this week (Hyundai UK).

Closely related cars can sit in different bands, as the Ioniq 3 and Kia EV2 show.

Model	Battery	Price before grant	Grant	Price after grant
Hyundai Ioniq 3 Advance	42kWh	£22,245	£3,750	£18,495
Hyundai Ioniq 3 Advance	61kWh	£25,745	£3,750	£21,995
Kia EV2 Air	61kWh	£27,995	£3,750	£24,245
Kia EV2 First Edition	42kWh	£28,495	£1,500	£26,995

The cheaper Ioniq 3 offers up to 213 miles of WLTP range and the 61kWh version up to 308 miles. Read our full story on the Ioniq 3’s UK prices. The Kia EV2 long range models joined the full-grant list in July (electrive).

What this means for you

There is no sign the grant is about to close. No early closure has been announced, and even our worst case keeps the money flowing into 2028, so there is no need to rush into a car you do not want.

Equally, there is no reason to hold off in the hope of something better. No increase in the grant has been announced ahead of the Autumn Budget on 28 October, and with demand at record levels, a Budget can tighten the rules or the bands as easily as loosen them.

Our take: if a Band 1 car suits you, the grant makes this autumn a good time to buy, with the discount taken off at the dealer. If your choice is a Band 2 model, compare its net price with Band 1 rivals and with carmakers’ own discounts, because the gap between bands is £2,250. If you can use an employer scheme, check whether salary sacrifice beats the grant. We will update this analysis if the DfT publishes spending figures or the Budget changes the scheme.