Is the paperwork for the UK government’s electric car grant really complicated, or have the rules quietly changed?
Maybe the person at the Department for Transport who approves the list was on holiday then, because we’ve seen a wave of new cars added in recent weeks.
The Kia EV2 Long Range was announced at the beginning of July, the Fiat 500e just the other week, and now the BMW iX1 and iX2 models are the latest to get the £3,750 discount.
And the Hyundai Kona Electric was announced as being upgraded from Band 2 to Band 1 before I even finished writing up this story. Happy times.
The iX1 has been on sale since November 2022 and shares its underpinnings with the Mini Countryman, while the slightly larger, more coupe-styled iX2 joined the line-up a year later in 2023.
It’s funny that the BMWs are only just now getting admitted to the electric car grant hall of fame because the Mini has been there a little while already, but despite being similar under the skin the two model lines are built in different places in Germany.
The Countryman Electric is put together in Leipzig in former East Germany, but the iX1 and iX2 models are both assembled in BMW’s Regensburg factory just north of Munich.
But isn’t the iX1 really expensive, you ask? Yes it is, but BMW has dropped the pricing of the three ‘cheapest’ trims to fit below the electric car grant’s £42,000 maximum limit to qualify.
So the entry level iX1 eDrive20 Sport has dropped from £43,555 to £37,065 which means that it costs £33,315 with the Band 1 grant discount. Crazy, eh? Suddenly an iX1 is £10k cheaper – you’ll feel really silly if you bought one in June.
The xLine version is now £35,315 with the grant, and the M Sport model is £38,065. Meanwhile the iX2 entry trims in Sport and M Sport specs are the same price as the iX1. Of course, don't expect too much pizzazz from the cars given their age and the fact that they weren't designed as purely electric cars, so there were some compromises.
Still, a huge discount is a huge discount. Could it all have something to do with the new Mercedes GLA that's being revealed this week? Hmm.
