Drivers may struggle to buy petrol cars as garages face risk of £15k net zero fines
By Paul Homewood
Told you so!!
Car salesmen face a shortage of petrol vehicles under Rishi Sunak’s net zero crackdown, one of Britain’s biggest dealership chains has warned.
Vertu Motors said sales of electric cars had “stalled” in the UK, raising the risk that manufacturers will miss sales targets mandated by law.
Under the zero emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate, 22pc of carmakers’ sales must be electric this year with the target rising annually until it reaches 80pc in 2030.
There is some wiggle room, with carmakers able to trade carbon credits.
But with manufacturers risking fines of £15,000 per car for breaching the rules, Vertu warned that many might simply throttle supplies of petrol and diesel cars to artificially boost their compliance.
Robert Forrester, the company’s chief executive, said: “The issue you’ve got is fleet demand for battery electric vehicles is very strong due to tax incentives, but retail demand [among private consumers] is weak.
“So if you can’t grow the battery electric vehicles to hit the percentage, the logical thing to do is to reduce the petrol and diesel supply.
“If you choke off petrol and diesel supply, then clearly I think prices probably will go up and actually used car prices definitely will go up.
“But also, I’m at a dealership in North Shields in North Tyneside right now, and we could get to the situation where somebody walks through the door wanting to buy a petrol car and we might not be able to supply one.”
In April, figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders showed electric vehicles represented 16.9pc of the market. The industry group forecasts EVs will take a 19.8pc share in 2024 overall.
Mr Forrester’s warning echoes remarks by bosses from Ford and Vauxhall owner Stellantis in recent weeks, who criticised the Government for imposing ZEV mandate targets that appeared to be ahead of consumer demand.
Both Ford and Stellantis have warned they could restrict car sales to the UK if they are at risk of breaching the rules.
As well as causing problems for manufacturers, the ZEV Mandate is going to cost motor dealers a lot of money too. Lower car volumes will mean lower profits and cash flow problems.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Oh and when is the lunatic government going to ban the import of ICE cars, perhaps from S Korea? Too cowardly to raise the issue? Interested in France myself; gonna buy a couple of Citroen diesels for my grandchildren.
The government must be made to understand that proper scientific analysis proves that Net Zero achieves nothing but poverty. If they wish to pursue Net ZERO, opinion is irrelevant they must provide rigorous proof.
So no one wants electric cars, so lets stop selling ICE cars and we will not have to pay any fines! So the dealer does not sell any electric cars or ICE cars. Problem solved.
It seems to me that no body in the government has any understanding of the basic economics of supply and demand.
Anyway if eliminating carbon dioxide is the most pressing point on the planet to the extent that it is an emergency, should we not welcome all these cheap Chinese electric cars to enable us to meet net zero by 2050.
GeoffB,
except that electric cars are not going to help achieve net zero as we do not have a low carbon grid. Adding load to the grid only increases CO2 emissions, compounded by the push for heat pumps as well.
Typically the government put the cart before the horse. The first thing was to de carbonise the grid (Which will not be done with renewables), build up the infrastructure then gradually introduce evs and heat pumps. This would take us far beyond 2050 to acheive but with current policy we will not reach net zero at all.
This morning, I am unloading buckets of sand and grape pomace from my ICE truck to change the character of my garden soil. This from a friend’s place 65 miles away. Estimated weight is 1500 pounds (680 kg) in 5 gallon buckets.
33 Grape Pomace Stock Photos, High-Res Pictures, and Images – Getty Images
John,
I like the Stalin Brand firewater at the link!
Auto
Hi Paul. How can I forward you an interesting email I have received from the Met Office?
Dutch adapting to reality…
‘In depth: The new right-wing Dutch coalition agreement’ [16th. May]:
https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/05/in-depth-the-new-right-wing-dutch-coalition-agreement/
And also in The Netherlands, energy companies have won the right to charge grid access fees for properties with solar panels because, as we here know, it makes running the grid more expensive.
And in more good news for normal people, In Sydney Ausgrid will be charging solar panel owners for the electricity they put on the grid between 10am and 3pm when solar peaks and demand drops.
And all the nonsense on farming is going. And asylum…
The ZEV mandate has nothing to do with CO2. It’s just a plausible mechanism to destroy our car industry.
Sun Tzu – the art of war
The chinese have won 95% EV market share without fighting a battle …they got our governments to surrender
Who cares? We have a vastly bigger and vastly more profitable finance industry. Its all about comparative advantage.
For how long?
Not heard of BRICS and their expansion?
One of the car youtubers said in a recent video that car dealers are already under pressure to sell – get rid of? – battery cars over normal cars. I wonder how quickly the personal import market will emerge alongside the importing of used cars. It was pointed out when European car makers were trying to avoid providing RHD cars for personal import that more of them are made than LHD cars.
Both parties – the LibDems are a rasggle-taggle bunch of chancers – seem committed to this EV lunacy. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-69016719 tells what Keir Starmer and the Socialists [vs. Rishi’s Socialists Light] claim they’ll do.
Remembering the ‘Ed Stone – with the then leader Milliband’s pledges – I assume these will soon be available in a handy format to lay by your front door – a veritable KeirMat.
Auto [with apologies!].
We can predict with absolute certainty what’s coming down the road; absolute chaos.
The 22% rule will hinder new UK made car production to such an extent UK manufacturing will face severe viability challenges. At 80%, assuming private buyer resistance continues, the UK market will not be viable without government rule changes.
Makers will have to consolidate manufacturing around the world to lower costs. If we’re lucky some of our UK branded car makers will stay. (Aston, Bentley, RR etc) At the worst end of things all the international brands (Nissan, Toyota etc) will relocate UK capacity elsewhere.
It’s yet another political sh*tshow.
Welcome to the Cuban car economy where only elites can afford new cars and mechanics, real mechanics, keep the old cars running forever.
‘Fraud not. They’ll be taxing them off the road asap with Mad-dog Miliband running the show.
Gosh, I thought Britain was part of the free world, banning what vehicles you purchase is an Eastern Block action…
They didn’t get the memo? It better be 22pc. Or else!
The Government has moved into the Twilight Zone.
And it will. Once you can no longer buy an ICE car, we will buy EVs. That we dint want them, that they are worse than ehst they replace, that they cost more…that doesn’t matter. There will be jobs making them, just as there were jobs in the USSR making stuff nobody wanted.
The EV push is about to die. Thieves have realized there is plenty of good copper in public chargers.
In Mogadishu-on-Thames, all public charges will become targets.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/north-bay/thieves-cut-tesla-cables/3537241/
Cat amongst the pigeons here ( at least 2 articles ) Hybrid vehicles are poised to gain market share, Cloud Theory finds AND The social dynamics powering EV adoption .nnn ENJOY !
Even Auntie is starting to waver.
BBC News – Is the move to electric cars running out of power?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-69022771
That’s the new BBC ‘In Depth’ – I think they’ve realised that their “Verify” is widely regarded as somewhat biased – to the left, naturally – and so not really thought of [outside Islington and the redder bits of Hampstead] as honest.
Of course, on ‘Climate Change’ the BBC has serious form, with their infamous meetings and directives and shadow bans. What do they think ‘Climate’has done over the last hundreds of millions of years?
Auto
This is a short term problem only for the car industry, because they are planning to stop all ICE car production soon anyway. They have to because ICE cars are banned completely in a few years. They are just having problems juggling the transition.
They are helping the Governments organise their own demise.
They should have been resisting with every way that they could, instead of capitulating.
The overall comment, apropos the BBC and its veracity, is contained in its instruction to its staff that they should never allude to ‘denier’ sentiment, to lean on their contributors to devote story lines and contentions in-line with a demand that whatever is to come, in terms of discovery or revelation on the topic, is to be measured by the original diktat, its baseline formed in, what, 2020? That being the starting point of all their measurement and insistence then what follows is infected by it; no wonder complaints from this web site are brushed aside as the reasoning is by now an embedded truth to the BBC’s operatives, the wider reliant public. Opinions ingrained with repetition over the intervening years, which can obviously only gasp in disbelief at those that think otherwise. Galileo suffered in a similar fashion; Luther exposed the mentality of those who who could prosecute the great man, the matter turns to indulgences, the tithe of pardoners, a situation where only the supposedly well intentioned can thrive. If such edicts apply in editorial policy then there is no limit of matters to which similar attenuations can be applied. In short, the truth that we are obtaining from the BBC can be little short of propaganda having been treated to filtering and or removal )for our own good, absolutely propagandist! They offer a version of the news only, that which is conformant with executive demand. Nothing that they broadcast can then be treated as wholesome or only appear as a truth to satisfy those already infiltrated formed by the history of the BBC’s controlling historic influence. Nothing can be tested. Floods will always be our sin and never the under subsidised engineering, overpopulation and short-termism. Corals may bleach but their recovery will not be news. Alternatives do not stiffen the resolve and such absolutism now stalks our universities, truth raped by visions of contorted sentiments.