NEW TransportEnergy funding levels, due to come into force later in the year, will only provide grants for one mainstream car currently on sale in Britain, and there is unlikely to be grant aid for fleets to buy LPG-powered cars.

Under current proposals, only new cars emitting less than 110g/km of CO2 will be eligible for a grant, which means that the Toyota Prius is the only vehicle – apart from some niche electric models – that qualifies.

Even environmentally-friendly cars such as the hybrid Honda Civic IMA fall outside the level, as it emits 116g/km.

Richard Tarboton, head of TransportEnergy’s Business Unit said that he believed a number of carmakers were on the verge of offering cars at this emissions level, and that the 110g/km barrier could be revised relative to the number of models and the total grant available. The overall TransportEnergy budget for 2005/2006 is £28 million.

After months of consultation with carmakers, industry and fleets, the new programmes have been designed to be technology-neutral, and to ensure that fleets are able to obtain grants only for vehicles demonstrating the biggest reductions in emissions.

Exact figures are yet to be finalised. As a result, makers of the vast majority of LPG-powered cars – whether new or retrofitted – are likely to find it difficult to make the emissions savings to qualify for a grant to cover part of the cost of the extra equipment, as the models they are based on are already relatively low in CO2.

But Chris Brown, public affairs manager for Vauxhall, a leading seller of LPG vehicles, reckoned that the LPG industry has done without grants for some time after the money ran out last year.

He said: ‘We need a degree of stability. The programme has been stop-start over the past few years, and we’re happy with this new scheme. We don’t believe it will make a lot of difference to our LPG programme, as we’ve been running without it for a while now anyway.’