UK confirms petrol and diesel ban from 2030

While Europe has approved a sales band for new petrol and diesel cars from 2035, Britain has just confirmed that it will bring the date forward to 2030. The news was in the air and today the government led by Labour's Keir Starmer said it will not backtrack.

Indeed, car manufacturers, concerned about the falling demand for electric cars in Europe, asked for more time. Rishi Sunak's Conservative government had thus questioned the decision to bring forward to 2030 the ban on petrol and diesel cars taken in 2020 under the Boris Johnson administration. Starmer, however, goes straight ahead.

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The ZEV mandate

Those of you who read us regularly will remember that a few days ago we wrote that in October ,Chinese cars overtook Fiats in the UK. There are many reasons for this and one of them was the ZEV mandate by which the UK required carmakers to achieve a 22 per cent share of electric car sales this year.

As a result, manufacturers have been forced to offer discounts, which they claim are 'unsustainable', to meet the target and in October, according to SMMT data, the BEV share for new cars reached 21 per cent.

Going into more detail, the ZEV mandate calls for the percentage of new electric cars sold to be higher and higher, the goal being 100 per cent by 2030. And there are fines on the horizon.

Fines for those who don't meet the targets

In the UK, car manufacturers who fail to meet the targets of the ZEV mandate will have to pay a fine. Penalties go up to £15,000 per excess vehicle and manufacturers can buy compensation from other manufacturers in compliance, again paying £15,000 each.

This is why the car industry has asked the government to reinstate the incentives for buying electric cars, which were removed by the Sunak administration. However, there are currently no government subsidies of any kind in the UK.