This week’s announcement of plans to close a Vauxhall van factory in Luton underlines the UK’s ongoing struggle with the transition to electric vehicles (EVs). [emphasis, links added]
Experts say that EV uptake isn’t keeping up with the government’s plan for UK manufacturers to sell only zero-emission vehicles by 2030.
Stellantis, which owns Vauxhall and several other car brands, blamed its decision to close the Luton factory “on the UK’s ‘stringent’ zero-emission vehicle mandate, sparking a row over the viability of Labour targets”, said Yahoo News UK.
Car manufacturers face fines if they don’t comply with yearly EV sales targets, so they often offer discounts or promotions, but plateauing demand for EV vehicles has put even the most established car companies under stress.
Private motorists “are refusing to play ball with the government’s targets”, said The Spectator, which means “some very large fines are looming.”
What are the zero-emission targets?
In January, a government-backed pledge to switch entirely to electric vehicles by 2035 – the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate – was signed into law.
The mandate set incremental benchmarks, requiring car manufacturers to sell set percentages of EVs in each year leading up to the total ban.
This year, Labour leaders said it would reinstate the ZEV mandate’s original goal: 100% zero-emission vehicles by 2030.
“This is five years earlier than the original mandate target set by Rishi Sunak’s government – and demand carmakers say they can’t meet,” said the Daily Mail.
To meet the current goal, 28% of new cars and 16% of new vans sold in 2025 must be zero-emission.
And if makers can’t meet the benchmark, they must pay a fine: £15,000 [$19,099] for each non-compliant car and £18,000 [$22,919] for each non-compliant van.
Why are carmakers ‘hitting the panic button’?
This year, poor demand for EVs means manufacturers have struggled to meet the government’s targets. And many are now left with a difficult choice.
“To avoid fines, they say they are having to discount new vehicles heavily,” said BBC News. Or they are “subsidizing” rival companies which only build electric cars, and “none of which have a manufacturing base in the UK”.
Stellantis and other carmakers have “hit the panic button”, said the Daily Mail, and “slashed the costs of some of their EVs by as much as 35%”.
Car firms are taking an estimated £4bn hit to make discounts, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders told the paper, and “has warned that the mandate will have ‘devastating impacts'” on businesses and jobs.
Ford has already announced it will cut 4,000 jobs across Europe, and Volkswagen is set to shut three of its factories in Germany “for the first time in the history of the company”, said The New York Times.
Jaguar, too, is undergoing a complete rebrand while it switches to 100% EV production.
“We need government-backed incentives to urgently boost the uptake of electric vehicles,” Ford UK’s managing director Lisa Brankin told the BBC.
The company has put hundreds of millions into bolstering its electric fleet but it isn’t seeing results. Without demand, Brankin said, the EV mandate “just won’t work”.
What’s the government’s response?
After Vauxhall’s announcement, the government seems to be paying closer attention to manufacturers’ demands.
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told car manufacturers he is ”profoundly concerned” about how the targets are panning out. “I don’t believe the policies that we have inherited, and I mean specifically in relation to zero-emission vehicles, are operating today in a way anyone intended them to,” he said, according to Yahoo News UK.
However, it seems clear that the government wants “to stick to a deadline of 2030 for phasing out the sale of new petrol and diesel-powered cars“, said the news site.
Top photo by John Cameron on Unsplash
Read rest at Yahoo! News
Premier Eby of British Columbia and Justin Trudeau also have same coercion going on in Canada. Every country is rejecting these vehicles because they are a backward step. Range is a problem; normally you are supposed to only charge them to 80%. If you want to charge them to 100%, it takes nearly twice as long to charge the vehicle. If you travel any distance in a large country like Canada, especially in the wintertime when it is -40C, you won’t get very far in an EV. If you have an accident with them and injure the battery, you might as well buy a new car. I have talked to many who own EV’s; they say travelling any distance is a major problem. One Tesla owner stated that he wore out a set of tires in one year.
It takes 5-6 times the mining to produce an EV, which is the equivalent CO2 emissions of driving a conventional gas car 70,000 miles …. this amount of CO2 before it even hits the dealership…. if that is of any concern to you. This amount of mining will continue to raise the cost of EV’s as more mines will have to open; that means EV’s won’t be cheaper in the future. It takes 3-4 minutes to gas up an normal vehicle; it takes 10 times as long to charge an EV. Who has the time for this. If you charge with a level 2 charger at home that is the same as having your clothes dryer on for that time. A normal gas station has say 9 pumps. In order to charge EV’s at the same efficiency as a gas station, to avoid wait times for a charger to be available, service stations will have to have 5- 10 times the number of chargers, and a lot more real estate. Who pays for the electrical infrastructure for the massive amount of power required for a single service station that has to convert its electrical infrastructure. Answer… the owner of the EV. It will be more expensive to drive an EV than a gas or diesel vehicle. This is why no one wants them. In the USA and Canada generally only the wealthy are buying EV’s because they are simply not practical for the average person and in cold weather they are useless.
Addionally to the usual string of disadvantages of EVs is the appalling depreciation rate and the refusal of garages to take them on part exchange.
I have seen EV Recharge Stations and their hardly ever used its just like Rotory Club setting up Bike Racks and their Never used Liberal Ideas are based upon Politics and their own stupid narrow minded Ideas based upon their Pipe-Dreams