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.
I currently have a Hyundai i10. I’m considering whether to replace it with a new one next year or whether to switch to a new Suzuki Swift which is a self-charging mini hybrid. If I’ve understood it correctly, all the hybrid battery does is provide a bit of power which improves the fuel consumption. It’s not a lithium battery, so not at risk of going up in flames.
I will be checking the hybrid info I’ve been given very carefully before going down that route.
It’s impossible to charge where I live, so a plug-in hybrid or an EV is a non-starter, even IF I was inclined to go down that route, which I’m not.
I have a mild hybrid Subaru. Completely pointless. The battery does diddly squat, unless crawling around a car park at 5mph, has replaced part of the fuel tank so decreased range, increased the weight of the vehicle and reduced the fuel efficiency. The pure petrol was a far superior car.
Decent car the i10. My kid has one. Pretty sure that the battery in a self-charging hybrid will be lithium these days – certainly is in the Swift according to Wokiepedia.
Yes many people might do that, but I hope you realise you will be taxed to kingdom come as the phony planet savers try to force you out of your choice of petrol or diesel.
Oh I fully expect to be paying ever more tax for everything.
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.
Yes. The harder the heels are dug in by the Great British Public, the swifter the can kicking will occur. And that applies to heat pumps, pylons and all the rest of the nonsense.
I don’t have a Smart meter: I will hold out as long as I possibly can.
That is exactly what will happen——Our Political Class have attempted the impossible and it actually serves no useful purpose except impoverishing people, which is really what the UN Sustainable Agenda is all about because it is claimed that our standard of living is too high and must be reduced. One of the main ways of doing that is to make energy unaffordable. Our drive to Net Zero while most of the rest of the world are not doing that just leaves us as the blithering idiots pretending to save the planet on our own. Trump’s Drill Baby Drill has come along at just the right time to knock the strut out of the Miliband’s of this world who now are having to admit their silly eco fantasy is DEAD.
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.
Manufacturers of ICE vehicles are already being forced to leave the market by the punitive taxes on not selling sufficient EVs. Like the perverse double council tax on second home owners, who as a result of being married are treated less favourably than two single people in a relationship or a single person in a very large house with more bedrooms than they need. When did this country become Communist ?
1945
Can this government not understand that these flip flopping regulations are a nightmare for any business?
The Eco Nutters in Government are slowly waking up to the fact that if Nissan goes, so does Labour in the North East.
Not good enough, it isn’t just the road vehicle market that net zero is destroying, it’s the entire economy that this ridiculous target is killing. Scrap net zero completely and do it now.
It was obvious that the absurd NET ZERO could never happen by 2030 because there is this little problem called REALITY. This ridiculous ideologically motivated nonsense was waved through parliament in 2019 with no debate, no discussion of cost benefit and not even a vote. What will happen now is that bit by bit this stupid eco socialist garbage will unravel as REALITY punches our silly Politicians in the face.
It will take a little longer for people to realise hybrids are no better than evs
After a few years, buyer’s won’t want them!
questions like “has the battery been replaced yet?” will be the new “has the timing chain been done yet?”
Average timing chain/belt water pump replacement around 500 quid, average hybrid battery replacement 4 to 7 thousand quid!
Don’t bother and just use the petrol engine to lug around a dead 200kilo battery, very economical! They’re no better than evs, it’ll just take longer to find out!
Batteries are one of the most toxic products that man makes that requires huge mining production as well as elaborate disposal and where possible recycling. Most are never disposed of properly ending up in landfills. But like everything else around the green blob let’s ignore this toxic issue.
Talk about a guy who flip flops. Britain you are screwed with the current administration. It is that simple.
Gosh ! The next thing they will be listening to what we want !