EV Mandates Tighten the Noose on the UK Car Industry
Car manufacturers must ensure that electric cars make up at least 33% of their total registrations this year or face swingeing Government fines of £12,000 for every car they are short.
So far, they are struggling at below 22%, which is even less than at the same stage last year. They finished 2025 at 23.4%, well below the Government Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandated target of 28%. The harsh reality is that few private buyers want one, despite what the Government orders.
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A back-door way of pricing cars out of the reach of an increasing percentage of the population? A WEF target, I assume?
I am no statistician, but might I suggest a more technical term than ‘decimate’ in your last sentence? A reduction of 10% doesn’t sound too serious.
Your missing the point, having to sell evs to meet a random meaningless target means not selling large amounts of petrol and diesels to meet that said %.
Thats were decimation comes in, cutting your bread and butter ice car production!
Its not viable for a large car manufacturer to use large factories and work forces to make minimal amounts of cars, hence they may as well just pack in, as I’m sure many will!
And that’s the end game..
Eviscerate?
The responsible politicians? Yes please.
Get your point, but the margins in car manufacture are pretty small, it doesn’t take much to swing from viable to unviable
This Government answer to the Chinese, they are selling us out
The Madness of Miliband and the weak stupidity of Starmer. A lethal combination for the economy of this country. Just wait for the reaction of the electorate when the inevitable huge destruction of employment arrives and new ICE cars become both unavailable and unaffordable.
Quite right. Miliband is the de facto leader of this country. Together with Mrs Balls, they control Starmer’s appeasement policy towards the Iran war. Starmer doesn’t dare censure, let alone sack, Miliband – not even cut the amount of taxpayers’ money being wasted on Net Zero.
If you wanted to decimate the country’s motor industry, it is hard to think of a better way to do it.
It’s almost undeniable that that’s exactly what they want. EV sales are dropping through the floor yet at every supermarket and car park we see EV chargers being installed as part of the agenda. I was chatting to a construction worker the other week who’d just finished our own pointless space hogging monstrosity in our local car park and he said “we’ll be ripping this out in a year, just like we have with the others.”
If they’re being ripped out that’s actually good news, someone does have to pay for these unused and unwanted installations.
I very rarely see any of the EV chargers in use around my way, and that fills me with hope.
EVs are an immature technology. New technology implementations follow an “S” curve starting off slowly, followed by a period of rapid development, at some point becoming “good enough”, after which the price falls and mass deployment is possible. For example aeroplanes 100 years ago had barely started, 70 years ago developments made it was possible to fly to most major European cities and cross the Atlantic, 50 years ago we got the 747 which could fly hundreds of passengers thousands of miles at 700mph and 30,000 feet. This was “good enough”. Today, planes still fly hundreds of passengers thousands of miles at 700mph and 30,000 feet – but at fraction of the cost of the original 747. EVs are at the stage of aircraft 70 years ago – much is possible, but we’re not at the “good enough:” stage yet and the subsequent price drop has yet to occur. If in the 1950s, if a minister for transport had said we’ll stop long distance train travel and mothball all ocean liners, people woful have thought him mad. Yet here we are with EV mandates…
I’m not convinced that battery technology can ever be good enough, there are no new stable elements to be discovered, there are no gaps in the electronegativity series and the solid-state battery is still a myth because the necessary electron mobility is essentially impossible to achieve. A 30 fold increase in energy density is very unlikely to happen.
A friend of mine who has an EV says that it is only practical as a second car, without their other diesel vehicle much of their transport needs would be unachievable.
Yeah but it must be OK because it is helping Elon Himself.
When the government of the UK is even more harmful to its economy than that of the EU, we know that there is treason afoot.
The motor industry destroyed, oil and gas destroyed, the chemical industry destroyed, hospitality destroyed. Society destroyed and overrun with immigrants. It’s not accidental, it’s all going perfectly to plan.
No conspiracy. Just the outcome of a centrally planned economy.
And it’s not just cars. Most of our economy is so profoundly intervened by regulation that it’s de facto centrally planned.
There is no one scheming. This is the system that has been created and gradually expanded since WWII.
Don’t forget agriculture!
Yes 👍
Spot on 👍
TBH, I think the green loonatics have gone about this completely the wrong way. If there is a genuine need to reduce hydrocarbon fuels (and that’s a bloody big if, that many of us don’t believe), then do it gently, in stages. I have just replaced my eight year old car, efficient petrol driven, with a newer model from the same manufacturer. The new car is a full hybrid (not plug in) and gives me sixty to the gallon on main roads and nearly one hundred around town. The old car was thirty five on a good day. My petrol usage for the last three weeks has plummeted, without spending a fortune on a full electric vehicle and I am a very happy bunny. So, why not persuade everyone to take this first step to electric rather than the all or nothing approach. Incidentally, my home costs are another thing altogether. The lying bastards are saying that they have reduced my energy costs, but as I am just coming out of a two year fixed contract, my gas and electric charge is about to balloon and I bet I’m not alone. Fortunately, I am mortgage free, but I understand it… Read more »
COERCION is the name of the game for everything GREEN. It is all about enforcement based on putting CO2 emissions reduction FIRST and people LAST. We are being impoverished with astronomical energy prices, and Industries decimated and government interfering in every aspect of our lives as they seek to align and comply with every UN directive, mandate and regulation no matter the cost.
Yes, the UN is one of the main organisations that needs to be defunded, disbanded and reduced to its component atoms.
That’s what socialist central planning looks like.
A Load of Bullocks ! Message to ICE Vehicle Manufacturers – Don’t pay these ridiculous fines & tariffs 👍
They broadly aren’t, they borrow from future credits to carry on as they are. I propose there shall be a Great Amnesty at some point.
Driving technology and innovation by politics never works. Sorry, but for a whole host of practical reasons very few people want one or could adapt to having one. I live in a tiny hamlet of 21 houses, only one resident has an EV and they have their own driveway, Apart from four other houses the rest of us do not. Installing chargers along our unadopted dirt track to our cluster of terraced houses is virtually impossible. My son lives on a steep slope in Devon with only street parking. Not a single EV in sight! No Mr Government, not going to happen. Serious rethink required.