Every diesel van eventually needs replacing, and for a lot of UK food truck owners, autumn is when that conversation actually starts — the season's wound down, the accounts are in front of you, and the next van is a real decision rather than a someday one. Electric keeps coming up. Here's what the government grant actually gives you, and the part of the pitch that doesn't survive contact with a working kitchen.
What the grant is worth
The current zero-emission vehicle grant knocks up to £2,500 off a small van under 2,500kg, or up to £5,000 off a larger one between 2,500kg and 4,250kg — most panel vans in the food-truck weight range fall into one of those two bands. To qualify, the van has to produce no tailpipe emissions and manage at least 60 miles on a charge. You don't apply for anything yourself: the dealer builds the discount straight into the price you're quoted, the same way a trade-in works.
What it doesn't cover
The grant is a discount on the vehicle, not a subsidy for anything you do to it afterwards. A conversion — hatch, counter, extraction, cooking equipment, refrigeration — still costs what it costs, on either kind of van. Neither does it pay for a charger at wherever you park overnight, which matters more for a food truck than it does for a commuter car: charging a large van from a domestic supply rather than a dedicated unit can take considerably longer than the vehicle's spec sheet suggests.
The question most van-grant write-ups skip
A diesel van's engine doesn't care whether you're also running a fryer, a griddle and a fridge off a generator or a leisure battery — that's a separate system. An electric van's kitchen equipment usually has to draw from the same pack that moves the vehicle, unless you fit a genuinely separate battery bank for the kitchen, which is its own cost and its own weight. Run the fryer hard on a long trading day and you're spending range you might want for the drive home. That's not a reason to rule an EV out — plenty of urban, single-pitch traders manage it fine — but it's the actual question to put to a converter, not "what's the range on the spec sheet."
Where it makes sense, and where it doesn't yet
An electric van suits a short, predictable circuit best: one or two regular pitches close to home, charging overnight where you park, no long tow to a festival three counties away on a trading day. It suits it less well if your season is built around touring — a run of weekend festivals with unpredictable charging on site, and long dead-mileage days between bookings. Running costs tend to favour electric either way: less to service, no oil changes, cheaper per mile on electricity than diesel for most usage patterns. The upfront price, even with the grant, is usually still higher — this is a total-cost-of-ownership question over several years, not a next-quarter one.
If you're weighing it up this autumn
The off-season is exactly when this decision gets made properly rather than rushed before Easter — the same timing as the rest of the end-of-season checklist worth working through before you park up for winter. Ask a converter directly what the kitchen equipment does to real-world range before you commit, get the grant figure confirmed in writing against the exact model (eligibility lists change), and cost the charging setup at home or your yard alongside the van itself — not as an afterthought once it's already on the drive.