Are fuel prices pushing you towards an EV?

ELM327 · 05-05-2026 10:57AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124436044#Comment_124436044

Yes but we aren't talking about giving a 5k grant to someone buying a 1.5k EV are we?

This would be a difficult one to introduce. When the US did it (I hate to cite the US but it's the only place that did it) it was a grant for 30% of the purchase price as a tax credit (refundable tax credit, so if you don't earn enough you get the cash when you do your year end taxes afaik), up to a max of 4k credit, only for cars bought from dealers, and only one credit per vin.

That's a good way of doing it.

I'd say a grant of 30% of purchase price (solely as tax credit) for EVs over 2 years old sold from a dealer with one credit per vin is a good way of doing it. Let's say you buy a 4 year old Ioniq or ID3 you could get 3-4k off so it becomes even better value.

Bass Reeves · 05-05-2026 11:16AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124445057#Comment_124445057

Only problem with ot being through dealers only they would swallow a lot of the rebate. As it is not encouraging new EV to come on stream.

An interesting

One in the UK.is there salary scarfice scheme, whete you can buy/ lease an EV pre tax. This is especially attractive in there case as there is tax traos at 50& 100k. The 100k trap os especially punitive where you lose all your tax credits. It means you must earn another 16k aporox before to take home another euro.

My son is over there he is looking at leasing an EV under the scheme. It will cost him 150 sterling a month to lease the car, this includes tax and insurance. If he installed a home charger the electric bill can be included in the deal as well.

If anything down the line to keep older EV's on the road I think there should be a tax rebate on repairs if they go over a certain sum in 12 months. However again I am wary as the benefits could get swallowed up by the industry

Oscar_Madison · 05-05-2026 11:23AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124445089#Comment_124445089

Yep, I’d be quite sure that any tax incentives offered for secondhand EV’s would see a jump in prices- it’s bad value.

Secondhand EV market is strong enough right now considering the “ bargain” thread rarely actually has a bargain 🤪

Not completely scientific but it’s a reasonable indicator of asking prices out there

ELM327 · 05-05-2026 11:27AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124445089#Comment_124445089

I am very envious of my colleagues in the UK with the salary sacrifice scheme. It is an example of how a credit/tax enhancement has not seemed to influence prices at all as far as I can see.

We should do it here but only for EVs. No HEV/PHEV etc. And see if that works.

Red Silurian · 05-05-2026 12:19PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124445057#Comment_124445057

Not sure why you would need a dealer to sell you the car to get the rebate but aside from that it's not a bad shout.

ELM327 · 05-05-2026 12:29PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124445283#Comment_124445283

There has to be some method of stopping fake sales

L1011 · 05-05-2026 12:30PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124445283#Comment_124445283

Because if you could get it on any private sale, the same car would be "sold" through a family or a set of mates over and over and over again.

Likelyhood is it would just make second hand EVs dearer by the value of the rebate. Bike to work scheme made bikes more expensive, grants have made insulation more expensive etc etc

magicbastarder · 05-05-2026 12:57PM

Bike to work scheme made bikes more expensive

is there any proof that it did?

L1011 · 05-05-2026 01:04PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124445397#Comment_124445397

I can probably find some newspaper ads from 2008 and compare to 2010 (inflation Dec 2008 to Dec 2010 was -3.8% for reference) if I spent a bit of time digging through the archives; but I still leisure cycled quite a lot back then, along with my father and we both bought bikes over that time period and saw significant increases on bog standard kit; bringing it up towards the tax relief threshold.

Red Silurian · 05-05-2026 01:19PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124445311#Comment_124445311

Not if you limit it to one grant per VIN it couldn't.

Not sure if BTW made bikes more expensive but the first time buyers grant definitely went towards increasing house prices

MrMusician18 · 05-05-2026 01:24PM

From an overall strategic point of view, incentives for the sale of used vehicles make limited sense and open the door for abuse. Car values are benchmarked off new ones so grant aid to encourage new sales results in more affordable used cars. The used car supply is almost completely fixed so such a tax break is inflationary.

A tax credit for new sales that's divorced from the sale price I think is best way forward.

L1011 · 05-05-2026 01:25PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124445451#Comment_124445451

That would create perverse pricing issues over how long someone had a second hand car before selling it.

There was someone on here insisting that the old FTB grant didn't increase house prices (they were defending HTB, which has also increased prices); and yet I was able to find multiple cases of prices dropping immediately by the FTB amount on its removal in archives. Developers had priced it in as profit.

magicbastarder · 05-05-2026 01:45PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124445420#Comment_124445420

would be interesting to compare bike inflation in ireland with it in another country; especially for bikes in and around the 1k price tag.

Red Silurian · 05-05-2026 02:29PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124445473#Comment_124445473

I'd believe it yes. One thing the FTB grant did at the time was it became your deposit, then banks started offering 100%+ LTV mortgages so the need for the grant wasn't there

Back to EVs, I think the best thing they can do to increase the physical number of EVs in the country is to give a grant to the value of the Duty and VAT on pre-owned EVs that get imported. This would result in an increase in EV imports from the UK

mr chips · 05-05-2026 03:09PM

"One in the UK.is there salary scarfice scheme, whete you can buy/ lease an EV pre tax. This is especially attractive in there case as there is tax traos at 50& 100k. The 100k trap os especially punitive where you lose all your tax credits. It means you must earn another 16k aporox before to take home another euro.

My son is over there he is looking at leasing an EV under the scheme. It will cost him 150 sterling a month to lease the car, this includes tax and insurance. If he installed a home charger the electric bill can be included in the deal as well."

Wow, that's seriously good. We had been looking at a couple of schemes like that for my wife up until maybe a year and a half ago (when she decided she was going to leave her job) - even restricting the search to used cars, I'm fairly sure the likes of a 4 year old Model 3 was at least £330 a month. We were only considering cars that would have a WLTP range of 240 miles or higher, but even the likes of an MG4 was around £300 a month

Red Silurian · 05-05-2026 03:25PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124445772#Comment_124445772

A salary sacrifice scheme makes sense in a lot of ways, we already have ones for bikes and bus passes

Especially now that diesel and petrol have come down again for the third week in a row they will likely start loading on the fuel duties again. Perfect time to splash the extra tax cash on EV ownership

ELM327 · 05-05-2026 04:16PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124445810#Comment_124445810

This is one thing I definitely agree on. All fuel subsidies should be ended now. If we want to have temporary subsidies to specific industries like haulage there's already a scheme for that.

Why are we wasting surpluses funding the fossil fuel industry when we could be spending it on renewables. Once the fossil subsidy is spent it's literally burned. If you spent the same money on renewables likely a solar, wind, wave etc station is built, or someone has better insulation and uses less energy.

MojoMaker · 05-05-2026 04:56PM

Sooner we grab that nettle properly the better.

Laughable to hear Micheal now talking about "looking into nuclear", yeah only 40 years too late.

Get solar and wind working properly and at scale and we have a decent chance at a much higher level of energy independence.

Traumadoc · 05-05-2026 05:28PM

I would consider buying an electric , but you have to ask why if they are so good do they have to offer tax incentives?

We have a plug in hybrid and wife was given an electric vehicle on loan ( Bmw x3 type electric vehicle)as her new BMW plug in hybrid developed a fault.- drove 320km round trip- it was not great.

Flinty997 · 05-05-2026 06:29PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124446101#Comment_124446101

Why do they only offer tax incentives on bad things?

MojoMaker · 05-05-2026 06:50PM

Incentives are offered to get over the kind of FUD you're spreading here @Traumadoc

Unwittingly perhaps, but nonetheless.

Bass Reeves · 05-05-2026 07:02PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124446101#Comment_124446101

Why was it not great.the vast majority of people are afraid of change. 2+ years ago electric cars were significantly more expensive than ICE, now they are fairly similar in price. because they have fallen substantially once people are afraid/expectant it will happen again. governments give a lot of incentives to develop strategies. there is significant tax breasks for all renewables. some we are probably as well off without. the UK stragety is to get numbers of cars bought new so as there is a second hand options in a couple of years time.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124445772#Comment_124445772

its becase of the stage of income he is at. in a way he dose not need a car he is working in the City of Londan and lives in the Isle of Dogs so a fairy easy commute. However the car would allow him to travel a bit around the UK at weekends. 35 euro a week for a new car and tax relief on the fuel makes it an option. I think he is looking at a new Kia EV3

MightyMunster · 05-05-2026 09:17PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124446101#Comment_124446101

The plug in hybrid sounds about as bad as I expected all right. You've put me off ever buying one

plodder · 05-05-2026 09:43PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124445311#Comment_124445311

Bike to work scheme made bikes more expensive

Not in general imo. What definitely happened was that certain discounts would not be available if going through the scheme. And iirc the reason was a lack of competition among administrators of it who were taking their cut from the sale and you had no choice but to go through them. If you were paying cash for a bike, there was no change.

joe1303l · 05-05-2026 10:20PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124445397#Comment_124445397

It also made lawnmowers cheaper for anyone that availed of it to get a new ride on mower 🤣

User1998 · 05-05-2026 10:21PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124446844#Comment_124446844

My mate got a set of golf clubs😂

Red Silurian · 05-05-2026 11:14PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124446101#Comment_124446101

Didn't they offer tax incentives on diesels in 2008? They are also offering tax incentives at the moment on ICE fuels. By your logic they must be far worse than EVs in that sense

prawnsambo · 07-05-2026 11:56AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124446958#Comment_124446958

Yep. Like solar panels, insulation and heat pumps. So bad that they have to offer grants to buy them.

pjdarcy · 07-05-2026 12:17PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124446958#Comment_124446958

Yep due to VW telling (read: lying) to the public that diesel produced less harmful emissions than petrol engines.

Red Silurian · 07-05-2026 01:54PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124450135#Comment_124450135

Those auful things making our lives better! We should strike until these incentives are removed, close down the motorways, O'Connell Street, fuel ports and make 2,500 different demands that none of us can agree on! Hurrah!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124450193#Comment_124450193

You mean VW aren't trustworthy? Shocker

Are fuel prices pushing you towards an EV?

Comments