Paul Homewood has recently produced an article for the Daily Sceptic website, with the title “EV Sales Still Way Below Target as U.K. Car Industry Careers Towards Oblivion”. It’s well worth a read, but for now I content myself with a brief summary of some of its main points. The data just released by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) show that although registrations of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) continue to rise in the UK, they were (at 19.6% of the market) well below the government mandate of 22% for the year. Some might argue that the signs are encouraging, given that the shortfall is relatively modest, but the reality is distorted by massive numbers of BEV registrations in December 2024 (a 56% increase on December 2023) as car makers scrabbled to pre-register vehicles in order to get closer to the target. The problem, of course, is that such behaviour simply makes the higher target (28%) in 2025 harder to achieve. They are simply kicking the can down the road. Note well, the SMMT data relates to registrations, not new car sales. And just as pre-registration of BEVs soared in December, so registration of new petrol and diesel cars fell rapidly (by 20.9% and 27.4% respectively) in the same month, as manufacturers further attempted to shift the proportion of vehicles registered during the year.

Paul tells us that major manufacturers (Ford, Nissan, Toyota, Vauxhall) saw major declines in vehicle registrations in the UK last year. Meanwhile, pure BEV manufacturers (basically Chinese companies, plus Tesla) with 100% BEV sales in the UK, have surplus ZEV allowances that they can sell to manufacturers who are falling short of their ZEV targets. With each vehicle on the wrong side of the target resulting in a fine of £15,000, surplus ZEVs may be worth up to £15,000 each to Tesla and the Chinese companies. As Paul Homewood points out, that’s a possible net profit (for doing nothing other than sell to defaulting car manufacturers the ZEV allowances effectively gifted to them by the UK government) to the Chinese of up to £204 million, and to Tesla of £600 million. What are the other car manufacturers to do? Pay massive fines to the UK government, or pay a bit less to their direct competitors to buy surplus ZEV allowances, thereby funding the very companies who are – with UK government help – driving them out of business? Neither is a particularly palatable option. As Paul concludes:

If you wanted to destroy the U.K. car industry, while enriching Chinese and U.S. manufacturers, I cannot think of a better way to do it.

And so, when an email popped up alerting me to yet another conference organised by the Westminster Energy, Environment and Transport Forum (WEET) to be held on 24^th February 2025 and titled “Next steps for zero emission vehicles in England, Scotland and Wales” I rather hoped some part of the conference might be devoted to asking whether the government’s policy in this area is misconceived or unwise, given the economic damage resulting from it. Perhaps there might be a section titled something like “Should the mandated march to EVs be paused or reviewed?”. Not a chance. Not when speakers have been lined up with titles like “Director, Transport Decarbonisation, Department for Transport” and the brilliantly Ruritanian “Head, EV Infrastructure, Consumer Incentives and Fleets Environment, Climate and Sustainability Directorate, Transport Scotland”. Instead, the email assures me that “This conference focuses on next steps for transitioning to zero emission vehicles in England, Scotland and Wales” and “Delegates will assess latest developments, and priorities for policy and sector stakeholders to enable the UK ZEV market to scale up.”

I should acknowledge that the email also recognises that ZEV mandate targets are likely to be missed in 2024 and 2025, so delegates will examine the future for the 2030 targets, while looking at “scope for flexibility to support manufacturing, including options for enhancing incentives for consumers and the potential reduction or delay to penalty fees. It takes place as the Government reaffirms its commitment to the 2030 ZEV mandate, alongside launch of a consultation on the ZEV transition and phase-out of petrol and diesel cars, including a pledge to provide clarity on support for manufacturers and consumers.” They will, then, look at “the potential reduction or delay to penalty fees” but the entire “vibe” suggests a belief in the wisdom of the project, with much more concern being with regard to how it can be achieved than whether it should be achieved.

The great thing about these conferences (if you are happy to be depressed by what they reveal) is that because the organisers are plugged in (pun intended) to what’s going on at Westminster, Holyrood and the myriad of supporting Quangos, reading the pre-conference spiel helps us to find out what’s going on, how much more public money is being thrown at net zero, and who it’s being thrown at. And so I learn – though I suppose I should already have known – that following the UK government’s disastrous autumn budget, £2bn is to be targeted at the automotive sector, including the ZEV manufacturing sector and supply chain; a further £120m was recently announced to support businesses in purchasing electric vans through the plug-in vehicle grant scheme; and “green” first-year allowances have been extended for a further year for qualifying costs on zero-emission cars and machinery. I discover, too, that delegates will consider next steps for scaling salary sacrifice schemes for EV company cars, alongside government-initiated incentives, in light of “manufacturers’ concerns of disproportionate burden”. Well, I sympathise greatly with the manufacturers, but my answer would be to remove the burden altogether, not to move it from the manufacturers to the taxpayer.

Other areas of discussion also unquestioningly assume the wisdom of the project:

The Government’s commitments to fund acceleration of the rollout of EV charging points will be examined, including priorities for allocations and grants, enhanced powers for local authorities, and implications for urban and rural areas, as well as the way forward for achieving equitable access to charging facilities across the UK.

Further discussion will assess how future challenges can be addressed, including increased grid demand, advancing innovation and scaling up of hydrogen fuel cell technology, and widening ZEV deployment in freight and logistics, as well as priorities for the wider policy landscape, including the role of Great British Energy, renewables, and development of decarbonisation and net zero policies.

Turning to the detail in the end-notes, I also find these three nuggets (all stemming from the autumn 2024 budget, so far as I can see):

…ensuring benefit-in-kind (BIK) tax rates for company cars will continue to favour electric cars, with plug-in hybrid vehicles aligning more closely with rates for internal combustion engine vehicles.

freezing the vehicle excise duty first-year rate until 2029-30 for zero-carbon vehicles, while hybrids and internal combustion engine vehicles will see increases

extension of ‘green’ first-year allowances for qualifying expenditure on zero-emission cars, plants and machinery for charging points.

It seems, then, that the current UK government is determined to press on rapidly with the net zero project, and that (black hole or no black hole) the money will be found to push it through (and a big stick will be wielded against those motorists perverse enough to resist the project by buying a new ICE vehicle).

The effect of all this seems quite simply to be to destroy UK car manufacturing. Another announcement from the SMMT on 20^th December 2024 could hardly be more downbeat (despite its claim that “UK automotive manufacturing is well placed to take advantage of this shift as recent investment announcements in EV and battery production testify”). From this we learn that regardless of the situation relating to new vehicle registrations in the UK(which grew by 2.6% between 2023 and 2024, but by only 0.4% to the end of November, the whole-year figure being distorted by the December rush, as we saw above), the rate of manufacturing decline within the UK seems to be precipitous. UK car production fell by more than 30% in November 2024. Output for both domestic and export markets fell sharply, down 56.7% and 21.3% respectively in the month. Taking the eleven months to the end of November, UK car output fell by 12.9% to 734,562 units, 108,787 fewer than the same period in 2023 and almost half a million short of 2019 volumes. Over the same period production of battery electric, plug-in hybrid and hybrid electric cars fell by 19.7% compared to the same period in 2023. The SMMT optimistically claims that this is “due primarily to model switchovers taking place at major plants” and they might be right, but what if consumers don’t want the EVs they hope to turn out in 2025, having completed their model switchovers? Private buyers don’t seem to be interested, with most EV sales being to leasing companies and for use as company cars.

The worry for car workers must be that the public will choose to keep their old internal combustion energy vehicles running for longer, and spurn the purchase of new cars, whether EVs or otherwise. After all, a well-maintained diesel can run for hundreds of thousands of miles, and cars no longer rust in the way they used to. Thanks to the zealotry of those in charge, the UK in years to come may well resemble Cuba, with 30 and 40 year old cars on the streets and the car plants standing idle. It’s a sobering thought.