At the end of July 2010, it was confirmed by the Transport Secretary Philip Hammond that from January 2011 motorists will receive up to £5,000 towards the purchase of an ultra-low carbon car. The initiative is open to both fleet and private buyers. Now that this has been confirmed how could this influence your fleet management decisions and what type of impact, if any, will it have on commercial fleet insurance?

The Government have made this announcement even before the completion of the spending review in order to support the early market for ultra-low carbon cars. With the changes in the road tax system of Alistair Darling’s Budget, the cost implications for the more polluting cars continue to get higher.

On top of this is the one-off first year “showroom tax” which could see the buyers of high emissions cars having to pay up to £950 in the first year, whereas those who buy a new car which has less than 130g/km of CO2 emissions will pay nothing.

The Department of Transport advise that making your fleet green does not necessarily have to mean changing the class of vehicle. In fact there is a useful tool on the Act on CO2 website where you can compare the various classes of vehicles, type of fuel and see how they fare on the tax band and CO2 comparison.

For example choosing the small family class and selecting all fuels the top vehicles are the Seat Leon, Ford Focus, the new Volkswagen Golf and the Volvo C30. The fuel for all of these is diesel and there is no tax to pay on these in the first year. All of these cars fall into the 99 CO2 (g/km) category.

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Jackie writes for the blog of a UK commerical fleet insurance company, Cover 4 Fleet Insurance. They offer cost effective and custom fleet insurance packages.

http://www.cover4fleetinsurance.co.uk/commercial-fleet-insurance.html