Keir Starmer is set to relax a planned 2030 ban on hybrid cars amid warnings that electric vehicle sales requirements are threatening the viability of the UK car industry. The Telegraph has the story.
The Department for Transport was expected to ban some hybrids from sale after 2030, when selling pure petrol and diesel cars will also become illegal. However, sources said it was reconsidering the plans following intensive lobbying by the industry.
The proposed rules would have prevented the sale of popular hybrid models such as the Range Rover Evoque and Ford Puma, the Telegraph previously disclosed, owing to concerns that they still have high CO2 emissions. Other, less polluting hybrids would remain available between 2030 and 2035.
Following warnings from carmakers that the move could hurt investment, a Whitehall source on Thursday suggested that the Government is now open to allowing more hybrids to be sold up until 2035.
They said ministers were listening to industry concerns, adding: “When we said everything was on the table, we meant it.”
The option of allowing continued sales of a wider range of hybrids was “100%” being discussed, the source added, although they stressed no decisions had been made yet.
Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary, promised “substantial changes” following a meeting last week with Japanese giant Nissan, which operates a large factory in Sunderland.
On Thursday, the Society for Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) called for “recognition of the role that all technologies – including hybrids, plug-in hybrids and hydrogen – have to play in decarbonising road transport, as either stepping stones towards, or full delivery of, a zero tailpipe emission market by 2035”.
It is understood that carmakers have warned Sir Keir’s Government that restrictions on hybrids of any kind between 2030 and 2035 would hurt investment in the UK.
The SMMT is also calling for tax breaks to stimulate demand for EVs, arguing that providing VAT relief could boost sales from 2025 to 2027 from 1.8 million to more than two million.
Major manufacturers including Japanese giant Toyota, which makes the Prius, have championed hybrids as a way of hedging their bets against slower-than-expected EV adoption across Europe.
Most companies lose money on EVs but still make healthy profits on hybrids, particularly luxury models.
The retreat from Net Zero continues.
Worth reading in full.
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They’ll be dragged into line with the rest of the market by the manufacturers. But on the other side of the coin, will there still be punitive charges based on the proportion of sales in different types, to encourage the sale of EV products? After all, later this year Toyota will be introducing a group of new products along the EV route. A cynic might say that they will be heavier, less thermally efficient, but compliant with new bureaucratic standards to keep the zealots happy.
Coincident with the previous-but-one article about the judicial reverse-ferret in Washington DC over the notorious climate-fraudster Michael Mann, comes wind of a Sir Two-Tier hybrid-car reverse-ferret.
The Long Reverse-Ferret Backwards of climate traptrap inches along in reverse gear. 2030 might be a big ask, but with a following-wind 2035 could see half a century of voodoo-science consigned to the dustbin of scientific history, where it’s always belonged.
In the interim until Sir Two-Tier gives the Kommissar for Energy Insecurity the boot, anyone knowing of the whereabouts of the national storage facility for treadmills, candles and extra-extra large rubber bands, please urgently notify by carrier-pigeon: The Kommissar, c/o “The Old Windmill”, Muckle Flugga Avenue, Doncaster D1 1CK.
F-ck me Sir Kneel is turning into Trump ! + Off topic , having seen the new Ofsted Chair we must wonder if we have entered a faze where an attempt by the ROPeacers to actually seize power in the uk is gathering pace ???
I don’t want a hybrid. What’s the point of them? More to go wrong, surely. Will be buying a nearly-new petrol car as close to 2030 as possible.
Five years out and the can kicking has started, this will just increase, unlikely Labour will want to be the Government that has to totally abandon EV’s, Heat Pumps and the entire Net Zero BS.
It will be epic to watch.
A war might be a good distraction for them, especially an existential World War.
Indeed, though I want the bastards to stop giving tax breaks (my money) to stupid electric cars.
Plenty more things I don’t want my tax money to be used for, but that is one.
We need a large scale tax withholding to happen, bring them to their knees for something other than BLM.
Indeed. Trouble is, though not many people like paying tax and most would say they would like to pay less, a lot of them want the state to do lots of stuff – perhaps not what the state currently does, but other stuff. I want it to do much less except in the areas of law and order and protecting our borders, mainly.
I read that as large scale scaffolding, and yes, that is exactly what we need.
Piano wire or hempen rope, whichever.
I thought this has all been legislated and the government can’t change any of this without changing the laws.
You could feel that things are moving in the right direction given the collapse of the green and woke agendas. I don’t share this optimism. In the political realm you are being offered two variants of scientific materialist reductionism in the service of elite interests. The other side promises the removal of wasteful humans who have to be paid a salary by a digital slavery that will rip the flesh from your bones just as coldly and quickly. Didn’t Churchill warn about the danger of a new dark age made all the more sinister and protracted by the cold light of modern science?
You can’t beat a blast of Churchill’s Finest Hour speech…
https://youtu.be/Z9amZ8McoBA?t=62
…Version (re-recorded by Churchill later?) which quotes “perverted science”.
Seems more apt for some modern voodoo science dressed up as “Settled Science”.
The whole discussion is cheap and nasty. If you enter into it then just be aware that it is a squalid discourse conducted in the lower depths when all civic and national pride is gone.
Still referring to CO2 as pollution though, the stupid bastards.
Came here to write exactly that.