Vauxhall will close its Luton factory in April with more than 1,100 jobs at risk after warning it may halt UK production amid row over government’s electric vehicle targets

9 comments

1. It’s like in the 80s, the government made people buy VHS video machines and not Betamax. Oh wait…. Sorry it was normal market forces.

2. More policy driven growth then 👍

3. Absolute farce that everyone could see coming a mile off 💩

4. Ah…the ever growing success of Brexit

5. Could be an opening for one of the Chinese manufacturers to move in, reading about them expanding in Europe to get ahead of the tariffs..

6. Still dealing with 14 years of Tory government

7. Uk is just going too fast into net zero. Stupid by any degree. We have the worlds most expensive electricity because we are subsidising renewables

8. The EV mandate is a massive gift to Chinese industrial policy – the European car manufacturers’ competitive advantage was in producing petrol and diesel cars. But we are forcing them into shifting to manufacturing something that the _Chinese_ have the competitive advantage in – EVs and their batteries.

   The Chinese realised in the 2000s and 2010s they had no way of competing with European and Japanese car makers with petrol/diesel. So they decided simply to not bother with ICE vehicles and instead invested massively in EVs and batteries, and bought up the global supply chains for the rare metals.

   So now, the UK/EU have these incredibly strict and ambitious EV targets, but the charging infrastructure is nowhere near ready, and the only country producing competitively priced EVs is China, who also dominate the most expensive component, the battery. The end result will be waves of factory closures in Europe since they are being forced to manufacture EVs that aren’t very good and nowhere near as cheap as the Chinese.

9. Don’t worry, I’m sure some Tory scum will snap it up, drain it more then liquidise.

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