Nine eco cars granted £5,000 discount

The Government has officially announced the cars that will qualify for its £5,000 Plug-In Car Grant from January 1 2011.

Nine cars qualify for the £5,000 discount, which despite the potentially misleading title, covers full electric cars and plug-in hybrids.

Buyers of any car on the list, which includes the Nissan Leaf, the Chevrolet Volt and the Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid, will receive a 25 percent discount on the car up to the value of £5,000.

To qualify for the grant, a car must emit less than 75g/km of CO2. The Government says that more cars will be added next year, and that it will review the effectiveness of the grant over the next four years. How it will measure that is not clear.

There's a £300 million cap on the money available for grants, which means that 60,000 cars can be registered - 15,000 per year over the term of the current Government.

To put that figure into context, around new 1.9 million new cars will have been sold in 2010 by the end of the year.

A further £100 million is being ring fenced for the setup of electric charging points across the UK, as well as research and development into a green car infrastructure.

Transport Secretary Phillip Hammond said: "Government action to support affordable vehicles and more local charging points means we are on the threshold of an exciting green revolution. 2011 could be remembered as the year the electric car took off.”

Eligible cars / first deliveries

Mitsubishi i-MiEV / January 2011
smart fortwo electric drive / January 2011
Peugeot iOn / January 2011
Nissan Leaf / March 2011
Tata Vista / March 2011
Citroen CZero / early 2011
Vauxhall Ampera / early 2012
Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid / early 2012
Chevrolet Volt / early 2012