Matt Prior
We’ve always been more forward leaning on this stuff than the EU,” said energy secretary Grant Shapps last week as the UK government released more information on its plans for zero-emissions vehicles.
More forward leaning on ideas, perhaps – mandating the introduction of zero-emissions cars by 2030 rather than by 2035 and refusing to consider e-fuels for specialist vehicles while the EU has – but no more forward leaning on making concrete plans.
Last week, the government released its ‘consultation on a zero emission vehicle mandate and CO2 emissions regulation for new cars and vans in the UK’, which proposed year-on-year industry reduction of average car and van CO2
emissions until new pure-ICE sales are banned in 2030. However, the consultation will run to the end of May, it won’t publish the responses until August and it will presumably take some time after that to put the consultation into policies. Yet it then expects to enact those at the start of 2024. There’s not even a proposal of what kind of hybrid will be acceptable between 2030 and 2035.
So if you’re at a car company planning how to run your business in the UK over the next couple of years? Good luck. And if you’re a micro manufacturer selling fewer than 1000 cars per year? Even better luck.
The likes of Ariel, BAC, Caterham, Morgan and many more, plus any owner, any enthusiast or anyone with the merest hint of automotive industry knowledge, will know that the UK is world leading at making niche cars. They’re pure, lightweight sports and specialist cars that, due to their diminutive size and their use being generally restricted to high days and holidays, tend to last forever, and their resistance to burning through consumables are about as environmentally unimpactful as motoring gets. Yet it’s an industry – a hobby – worth hundreds of millions of pounds and thousands of jobs to the UK economy.
While the EU deigns that these cars are “out of scope” of the regulations, the UK will apply a derogation only until 2030. Then the proposal states that “the end of petrol- and diesel-engine vehicle UK sales in 2030 will still apply to both micro-volume and small-
