The UK is maintaining its planned phase-out of new petrol and diesel cars despite growing divergence with the European Union over the pace of the transition to electric vehicles.
The Department for Transport has reaffirmed that sales of new pure petrol and diesel cars are due to end in 2030, while the Government continues to target a 2035 deadline for new hybrid vehicles.
The decision leaves Britain pursuing a tougher timetable than the EU, which has moved towards greater flexibility in its approach to combustion-engine vehicles.
The divergence is becoming an increasingly contentious issue for the British automotive industry, which is already facing weak consumer demand, high production costs and uncertainty over the pace of electric-vehicle adoption.
Critics argue that maintaining the 2030 deadline risks imposing additional costs on consumers and manufacturers at a time when the industry is under pressure to remain competitive. FairFuelUK, the motoring campaign group, has argued that the economic costs of the policy could substantially outweigh its environmental benefits.
The Government, however, maintains that the transition is necessary to cut transport emissions and provide certainty for manufacturers investing in electric vehicles.
The policy also raises questions over Britain’s competitiveness with European manufacturers. If the EU ultimately permits combustion-engined vehicles to remain on sale beyond 2035 under a more flexible regime, British manufacturers and consumers could face a regulatory framework that is materially more restrictive than that of its largest trading bloc.
Howard Cox, Founder of FairFuelUK, said: “Keeping the 2030 ban will cripple the UK economy and will not accelerate the uptake of expensive EVs. The Government is forcing them onto us without consultation and is relying on subsidies and tax breaks to bribe us all into submission. And the national grid simply cannot cope with the extra load required to keep the nation fully charged.”
The rest of Europe has sensibly put back its ban on new fossil-fuel car sales. Wanting to lead the way with an ill-informed, clueless approach that wrecks the UK economy for pure ideology makes no sense whatsoever.”
British motorists, manufacturers and jobs are being sacrificed on the altar of a target that independent analysis proves delivers vanishingly small climate returns at enormous economic cost. Drivers deserve better than this. Scrap the 2030 ban now – before the damage becomes irreversible. The war on the motorist remains at the heart of Labour’s ignorance of how to make the economy grow.
FairFuelUK continues to urge the Government to follow the evidence, protect the 37 million UK motorists who keep the country moving, and abandon this self-destructive policy.
Leave a Comment