Sales of new petrol motorcycles set to be banned from 2040
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
The sale of new petrol-fuelled motorcycles is set to be banned from 2040, under plans due to be announced by ministers as part of the Government’s net zero crackdown.
The move would affect all vehicles classed as “L3” and upwards, including scooters and light, medium and higher-powered motorcycles. There are around 1.3 million motorcycles registered in the UK.
It is expected to be revealed soon, according to industry sources, although it is not clear whether Downing Street has signed off on the policy yet.
The change would also be accompanied by a plan to ban sales of new petrol-fuelled mopeds earlier, from 2030.
That reflects the already-high numbers of electric mopeds being sold. They accounted for roughly half of UK moped registrations last year.
By contrast, the market for electric motorcycles is far less developed and represented less than 2pc of total sales in 2023.
They also suffer from some of the same “range anxiety” issues as electric cars, with many e-motorcycles currently limited to ranges of less than 100 miles while not all are compatible by default with electric car charging stations.
The Motorcycle Action Group, which represents riders, has claimed banning new petrol motorcycle sales is “unworkable” and will “terminate most British motorcycle manufacturing” if implemented.
The Government insists no final decision has been taken on banning sales of petrol motorcycles.
But the Department for Transport is taking steps to make low-powered electric motorcycles a more attractive transport option and views them as “dynamic, efficient and affordable… and too often overlooked”.
Last month ministers extended the grant for plug-in electric motorcycles, under which riders can get up to £500 off models costing less than £10,000, until April next year.
The Motorcycle Industry Association had previously warned that phasing out petrol-fuelled motorcycles by 2035 was “unrealistic” and could cause some manufacturers to “review their place in the U
Commenting on the proposals last year, Tony Campbell, the association’s chief executive, told Motorcycle News: “If you get it wrong, you could kill us.”
A spokesman for the Department for Transport said: “An increasing number of riders are choosing electric motorcycles and mopeds, including from British manufacturers like Maeving.
“While we are committed to transitioning away from petrol and diesel engines, no decision has been taken on the end sale for new motorbikes and mopeds, we continue to engage with the industry on the matter.”
Guy Opperman, the roads minister, added: “Our Plan for Drivers is not just improving journeys for car users, but also motorcyclists, who have sometimes been overlooked.
“We’re getting on and delivering our plan to make life for drivers – and motorbike riders alike – better, fairer and cheaper, and I am glad the consultation has already seen such a significant response.”
Quite what planet Opperman is on is a mystery, but it certainly is not this one! How can he claim that the government is making life for drivers better, fairer and cheaper?
Best comment comes from Jon Burton:
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Pleasant memories in 2041….
Funniest thing I’ve seen for a while.
I was taken. My first thought was “Honda CBX?”
Sounds like a triple to me. Must be Italian as I found it hard to believe that they turned up to the Mugello GP with car engines on pallets and megaphone exhausts just to rev them until the TV coverage spotted one. The Portuguese GP attracts a lot of Spaniards so I assume the one revving the unsilenced chainsaw – minus bar and chain – in the tunnel as we queued to leave the Estoril circuit was one. I thought I could feel blood running out of my ears….
Some of us are old enough to remember the ‘music’ created by Suzuki’s V3 at 15 – 16,000rpm. All 50cc of it.
And being a 2-stroke there was a ‘bang’ each revolution. 😉
You seriously have to wonder how much more stupid our politicians and civil servants can get.
It’s all very well us “enlightened” people talking to ourselves, but what can we actually DO about it to stop the suicidal lunacy. Recently Claire Coutinho seems to be realising some truths, but she must be under massive pressure to enforce the “legally binding” Net Zero targets, and she will be replaced by Ed Milliband ……..
“She must be under some pressure..” – time she rose up out of the bed then. and got HERSELF a life.
Gonna go down well at the massive biker convocation weekly up the A32 near us, bless them. Many surprisingly mature. My MP Flick Drummond won’t tell me when her government will ban foreign ICE vehicle imports. Frightened of the French and Germans?
I was always surprised that the smoking ban wasn’t immediate on the basis of all those emissions from the match or lighter, never mind the cigarette itself.
Some of our Conservative ministers cannot see how such stupidity will further help to crash our ailing economy and further guarantee them losing the next election, In a stroke of such idiocy, they have lost any chance of securing the votes of any motorcycle owner in the country, together with the votes of their families and friends at the next election. They have also ensured the close-down of much of the motorcycle industry such as specialist dealers and repair shops. With people like this governing our country, one almost hopes that the Labour Party will win the election to avoid our current incompetent government from taking us further down the road to becoming a third rate nation. Would such an idiotic decision I wonder, prevent anyone from travelling abroad to purchase a petrol motorcycle from a foreign country and bringing it back to the UK? The petrol driven motorcycle industry, associations and owners should get together and rise up against this madness and force them to change this mind boggling decision and sack the Ministers responsible for such unbelievable incompetence.
They don’t care about getting votes anymore.
As Joe Stalin said, it’s not who they vote for that counts, it’s who counts the votes.
Just look at the Khanate of Londonistan, for example.
“Last month ministers extended the grant for plug-in electric motorcycles, under which riders can get up to £500 off models costing less than £10,000, until April next year.”
Bugger. That rules out one of these …
https://www.livewire.com/en-gb/livewire-one-electric-motorcycle
LiveWire ONE gives you … drum-roll …
13 MILES FOR EACH HOUR OF CHARGING ( see Detailed Specs )
…Licence to BE or GET KILLED then? Hi-speed silent mobility,….. we’ve already see much of that around the streets (pedalists amongst pedestrians)
Road trip! Buy your BMW in Köln and enjoy the ride back.
There are plenty of good sites here in SC for Triumph. VW is building a plant above Columbia. I bet the industrial site would be great for Triumph, et al, as well.
Er….Berlin actually which makes for a longer ride.
Actually?
It would be seriously freaky if you couldn’t buy a BMW in Köln.
Procar Motorrad
Bayerische Allee 1
50858 Köln
The need to ban all fossil fuels (hydro carbons) because of carbon dioxide emission, is in the Climate Change Act 2008, it is a legal requirement so it has to be achieved by 2050. The eco loons are taking the government to court for failing to achieve the carbon budget plans and generally winning.
Blinkered civil servants just go ahead and introduce all these bans on fossil fuel usage because the climate change act says so. They are just doing their job.
So the Climate Change Act 2008 has to be repealed or watered down, Therese May changed the 80% to 100% without even a vote, so just change the 100% to 60% and you know we are almost at that now, and it is still more than most of Europe is aiming to achieve.
With regard to banning motorbikes, surely with the mammoth need to keep jet planes flying, the price of Sustainable Airplane Fuel is going to drop and it should be possible to use that or a higher octane special in motorbikes.
Germany has watered down the ICE vehicle ban and allows vehicles that conform to use sustainable fuel to continue sale.
So to sum up, Change the CCA to 60% (we are not going to get a repeal, too many green loonies particularly in parliament) and allow sustainable fuels to be used.
I agree with you on the climate change act. I think it is inevitable it will be watered down, because it is simply unachievable.
On the sustainable fuels, it’s a mystery to me where these could come from, in the quantities needed. There is only so much waste chip frying oil to go round.
Biofuels are a bit of an environmental disaster, taking up agricultural land and resources that are needed to grow food. Also, in many cases, the carbon emissions are higher than burning fossil fuels directly, because of all the fossil fuels used in agriculture and transport.
I agree that SAF are anything like sustainable (at a realistic cost), but it seems that the air industry has closed ranks to prolong the myth, realising that battery/hydrogen airplanes are just impossible, all the hype about battery planes are little more than air taxis for the rich. It is a pity that the motor industry did not think to adopt this approach, and kill BEVs, I guess they are going to regret wasting all that money.
The sales of long haul jets are at an all time high Boeing, Airbus are increasing production, the Chinese are now making narrow bodied 737 equivalents, and the suppliers of regional jets/turbo props are all buoyant. Airports are busy, vast expansion in the middle east, (Dubai), China etc.
Motor bikes are such a minor contributor to CO2, when airplanes are major, so when do we expect the announcement that all UK airports are going to be closed between 2035 and 2050 as required by the Climate Change Act 2008. My guess is never, I am surprised that the eco loons are not going for a judicial review on this (maybe they are the government lost the recent one).
You could combine electrolytic hydrogen with CO2 out of the atmosphere to make net zero hydrocarbon fuel. This gets round the biofuels problems.
But it is energy-inefficient, and so the amount of windmills/solar panels needed is huge. It will inevitably be an expensive fuel. But the Royal Society included this idea in their publications.
The Act needs to be watered down very quickly. If the climate change idiots get in at the next election, as they seem sure to do, they are more likely to strengthen the act, especially as the fanatic Milliband is given control of the climate change brief.
I am pretty confident that the climate change act will hit a wall at some point. The best thing to do is sit and watch it all fall apart, and when it does, say we told you so.
Net zero is only achievable on a war footing, with a directed authoritarian administration. Yet we live in a country that spent many billions on a railway line without ever building a railway line. A country that takes two years to install some traffic lights; that is incapable of even maintaining the roads or making the trains run on time.
How delightfully totalitarian! Can any industry that has only half the market be shuttered? Windmills have less than half of the electricity generation business.
BTW, electric mopeds meet the identical standard for closure.
Guy Opperman, the roads minister, added: “Our Plan for Drivers is not just improving journeys for car users, but also motorcyclists, who have sometimes been overlooked.
“We’re getting on and delivering our plan to make life for drivers – and motorbike riders alike – better, fairer and cheaper, and I am glad the consultation has already seen such a significant response.”
Mr Opperman fundamentally misunderstands why most of us bikers ride our bikes, and there are no circumstances in which electric motorcyles will ‘improve our journeys’.
There will always be a few – there always is – who will argue in their favour, but electric bike enthusiasts as a percentage of bikers are a tiny fraction of the community as a whole, and far smaller than the percentage of drivers who advocate for electric cars. I would put money on the consultation’s ‘significant response’ being overwhelmingly negative.
Build your e-scooters for pootling around your cities and exploding in your garages if you like, but banning motorcycles and winning votes are mutually exclusive concepts.
CK
All true. Bikers have their own individual ideas for riding.
Gamecock rode 105 miles around surrounding counties yesterday. There is no E bike that could do that. None.
My local motorrad dealer stopped carrying e bikes, they sold so few.
Gamecock smiles when he passes a rural mom & pop with 20 Harleys parked out front. Harley riders want a hamburger. BMW riders want to . . . ride.
Exactly – and I can’t imagine any one of those Harley riders wanting to swap their big potatoes for the whine of a sewing machine with wheels…! 🙂
How big will the size of the battery have to be on a motorcycle to ride -say, 150 miles, and how heavy would it be for a rider to easily handle the bike with a heavy battery, when he stops in traffic and when parking?
Indeed. Also – given that bikes are a lot more prone to falling over than cars, I would suggest that a bit of bad luck might result in a complete write-off (or serious fire), as opposed to a few hundred pounds worth of replacement parts. City scooters with small batteries, maybe. Big bikes? Just not safe.
CK
I believe that a range of 50 odd miles for one of these will be the best you can hope for. A traditional motorcycle will do 5x that so range issue will be worse.
On the plus side compared to a BEV charging will be a lot quicker.
On the plus side, motorcycles will be much easier to import than cars as they don’t have the steering wheel problem. Importing bikes never got going like it did for cars and most of the imports were of foreign versions of models or models not sold here.
I wonder when they will come for lawnmowers, though you have to be “far-right” even to contemplate using one.
The straw that breaks the camel’s back. Suddenly they’ve got a lot of people who really couldn’t care about politics to care.
“When they came for motorcycles . . . .”
Cirrusly, it looks like CCA is an Ermächtigungsgesetz – Enabling Act. It authorizes the British government to do anything it wants to, as long as it says it’s for tackling climate change.
Can you not gas Jews, as long as it tackles climate change? Scots? The list of things they are banning, and requirements they are creating, are the actions of people who are willing and able to start pogroms.
CCA is evil.
Many motorcycles offer powered transport that uses minimal resources. Motorcycles do not wear out road surfaces to any meaningful extent.
10-4. My BMW is badass, but I get 51 mpg.
As I predicted, there is no rowing back from Net Zero at all, despite Sunak’s words. He is a liar and nothing more.
Never going to happen – net zero will just be another Govt induced scandal that will be eventually dropped and its effects heavily litigated against