EV targets are ‘disconnected and unrealistic’
THE Government risks putting the motor manufacturing industry “under water” with its current electric vehicle targets, the leader of a North East dealership chain has claimed.
The UK’s zero emission vehicles (ZEV) mandate means that at least 22% of new cars sold by each manufacturer in the UK this year must be zero emission, which generally means battery electric vehicles. Sales have risen overall, by 8.2% since January 2023, but Vertu Motors CEO Robert Forrester said the figure is solely being driven by a rise in EV sales for corporate fleets and not private customers.
Government plug-in car grants were available for customers buying standard electric cars, but this incentive ended in 2022 – and Mr Forrester says work must be done to renew such incentives to encourage private customers to choose electric.
His comments come as the number of electric vehicles registered in the UK has hit the one million mark in the UK, figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) show. But Mr Forrester said the milestone figure hides the fact that the number of EV sales is actually slowing, amid mixed messaging, high costs and a lack of infrastructure which is putting off people from buying electric vehicles.
He said: “The facts are that the Government has mandated that customers will have to buy electric vehicles and there does seem to be heavy reticence on behalf of customers to actually buy them. There’s quite a lot of reasons for that. Certainly charging infrastructure but there’s also a big cost disparity up front when buying an electric vehicle. The Government is going down a path of forcing manufacturers through fines to actually sell electric cars in the UK, without any consumer incentives whatsoever.
“They took incentives for private customers off a number of years ago. There’s incentives for companies – and that’s why fleet is so strong but it is a very disconnected and unrealistic policy on behalf of the Government.”
Various factors should be explored to aid a move towards electric, he says, including the disparity in VAT rates.
He said: “There’s a number of policy initiatives that the industry are looking at. I’ve got an electric vehicle and there’s a vast difference in VAT between charging my car up at home, outside, or using public charging points, the VAT is very different – 5% to 20%.
“The incentive programme – if they are going to pursue these targets, they’re in grave danger of putting the European car manufacturing industry under water with this policy along with the European Union – is to incentivise private customers to make the technological change and bridge the gap in cost. That could be in VAT, or subsidies which they have done in the past.
“They’ve got to connect the policy with something that is practical because what we’ve got at the moment is not practical. The private market in January was down 15.8% and business demand was up 30% and we have a strange situation where people can get electric vehicles effectively from their employer with tax incentives and that can mean that they’re not wanting to buy them outright themselves, so a big distortion is created by Government policy within the car market.”