‘Ev-only sales by 2032’

MPS call to bring petrol and diesel ban forward eight years

Hugo_griffiths@dennis.co.uk @hugo_griffiths

SALES of new cars with any kind of petrol or diesel engine should be banned by 2032, according to a crossparty group of MPS – a move that the automotive industry has called “nighon impossible” to achieve.

Current Government policy, set out in its Road to Zero strategy document, says “conventional” petrol and diesel models should be banned by 2040, and only cars that are “effectively” zero emission will be sold by that date, allowing new plug-in hybrids to remain on sale past 2040.

But the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee, a cross-party group of MPS from the Conservative, Labour and Scottish National parties, calls for the 2040 date to be brought forward to 2032 and new plug-in hybrids also be banned from sale. This would require consumer demand for zero-emission vehicles to increase by 17,000 per cent in just 14 years.

The BEIS report argues that to improve air quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, “zero should mean zero”.

It urges the Government to set a “precise target for sales of new cars and vans to be truly zero emission by 2032.” This would leave only ‘pure’ electric cars (EVS) such as the Nissan Leaf and any future hydrogen cars, like the Hyundai Nexo, on sale in new car showrooms. In a scathing attack on central policy, the BEIS committee says the Government’s “lack of clarity on the meaning of the 2040 targets is unacceptable”.

The MPS recommend “Government either acknowledge that petrol and diesel will ultimately need to be fully phased out from cars and vans, or admit that it is not seeking a zero-emissions fleet. It cannot have both.”

The committee also considers the Government’s decision to cut grants for electric vehicles by £1,000 was “made too soon and too suddenly” and “risks undermining the UK’S burgeoning EV market”. EV sales made up just 1.7 per cent of all UK new car registrations last year, although by market share, British residents are the fourth biggest buyers of electric cars worldwide.

The UK’S EV charging system also comes in for criticism. BEIS says “poor provision of charging infrastructure is one of the greatest barriers to growth of the UK EV market”, and warns “public charge points will be required in residential areas for the 40 to 50 per cent of homes in the UK that do not have off-street parking”. The authors highlight that there is just one public charger per 98,800 residents in Wales, compared to one per 3,931 in the North East.

Finally, BEIS concedes some 856,000 people are employed in the wider UK automotive industry, and acknowledges production of EVS in the UK is “in its