Foggy clean car policy
Boost for Britain: BMW will build its electric Mini in Oxford
AMID all the hullabaloo about the Government’s new clean air policy announced this week, you may have gained the impression that 2040 will spell the end of the internal combustion engine.
It’s actually a bit more subtle than that. The devil, as ever, is in the detail.
Only new cars with a conventional petrol or diesel engine will be banned from sale from that date.
That means hybrid cars — those with petrol- electric and diesel- electric engines — of which there are already millions on Britain’s roads, including the Toyota Prius, will still be permitted.
They are not considered ‘conventional’ in the conventional sense by Whitehall.
quickly Indeed, to car hybrids, makers anyway,are moving to meet emissions targets.
Millions of ‘conventional’ petrol and diesel cars bought before the deadline are also likely to still be around — if they haven’t been priced off the road by local councils waging war on the internal combustion engine. any of these existing petrol and diesel cars will be able to be bought and sold as used cars, until they reach the end of their lives. as for all-electric cars, ministers are promising a charging point every 20 miles on major roads. This is a bid to overcome range anxiety — the fear of running out of juice before you reach your destination. It’s hoped that by 2040, battery technology will have advanced sufficiently to reduce such concerns. But as one cynical motor industry boss told me: ‘If only we could engineer our cars to run on government spin, we could extend their range to thousands of miles.’ confusion over the ‘death’ of diesel and petrol comes after news this week that German giant BMW will build the electric Mini at its Oxford plant. BMW, like Jaguar land rover, is investing heavily in electric and hybrid technology. I have driven working prototypes of both the electric Mini e, launched in 2008, and an allelectric rolls-royce, which was brought out in 2011. significantly, the flexible chassis of the new rolls-royce Phantom, launched on Thursday and featured below, is designed to allow alternative ‘propulsion’ technologies, such as electric motors and batteries.