[galeos]

In the UK the tax incentives for Electric cars may be skewing demand towards new Vs secondhand EVs.

I can lease a new EV via my employer's salary sacrifice scheme. I can pay my lease payments from my pre-tax income. There is an additional tax due on cars leased this way in the UK called Benefit-in-Kind tax (BIK). The rate of this tax is fairly high for petrol/diesel cars but for EVs is currently near zero (based on 2% of the car's value).

The problem is that most of the major lease firms that operate these programs for employers only offer new vehicles. Ideally I would like a nearly-new EV. I have escalated and apparently our lease provider (Tusker) are looking at rolling this out in the first half of this year. I currently know of only one other lease firm that offers this option. I suspect is in the interest of lease firms to prop up the value of the used EV market, but this depends also on their margins on new vehicles. I wonder if it would make sense for the tax incentives for used Vs new EVs to be rejigged to avoid incentivising unnecessary new car production?