By William James <\/p>\n
LONDON, Aug 14 (Reuters) – Britain on Friday set out a range of options that could ease the pressure on car manufacturers to \u200cswitch new sales to zero-emission vehicles, launching a review of the existing targets \u200cwhich gradually phase out new petrol and diesel cars. <\/p>\n
The mandate, introduced in 2024, requires carmakers to ensure \u200ba rising proportion of their annual sales are zero-emission vehicles, with EVs accounting for 33% of new car sales in 2026, 80% in 2030 and 100% by 2035. <\/p>\n
The policy is designed to accelerate the industry’s transition to electric vehicles by imposing fines on manufacturers \u200cthat miss the targets. Carmakers have \u2060argued, however, that supply-chain disruptions and insufficient consumer demand are making the requirements difficult to meet. <\/p>\n
A government consultation opened on Friday seeking \u2060views from the industry on four alternative pathways for the targets. Three would retain the 2035 endpoint but cut the 2030 target to as low as 50%. A fourth would \u200bkeep the \u200bexisting path but introduce new flexibility to \u200bhelp manufacturers comply. <\/p>\n
“In the context of \u200cchallenging and complex global economic conditions, including supply chain disruption and tariff and trade uncertainty, the UK is reviewing targets to ensure they remain pro-business and grounded in the real world,” a Department for Transport statement said. <\/p>\n
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders has previously argued for an urgent review of the whole mandate, saying higher energy \u200cprices, incomplete charging infrastructure and weak consumer confidence were \u200bholding back demand despite manufacturers offering substantial discounts on \u200bEVs. <\/p>\n
The Labour government, which inherited \u200bthe ZEV policy from the Conservative Party when it came to \u200cpower in 2024, last year introduced a \u200bnumber of technical changes \u200bthat made it easier for manufacturers to meet the targets. <\/p>\n
Battery EVs accounted for 27.4% of new car registrations in July, data published earlier this month by \u200bindustry body New AutoMotive \u200cshowed. The body said this showed sales were ahead of the level required \u200bfor compliance once existing flexibilities within the mandate were taken into account. <\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby William James, Editing by William Maclean) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By William James LONDON, Aug 14 (Reuters) – Britain on Friday set out a range of options that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,39877,22643,13532],"class_list":["post-103636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-britain","tag-car-manufacturers","tag-targets","tag-zero-emission-vehicles"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117095132227680774","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}