I wonder if more countries are going to do something similar to this.
UK ban on petrol and diesel car sales postponed to 2035 | Auto Express
Prime Minister Sunak rows back on Boris Johnson’s 2030 ban, saying ‘it’s not right to impose the cost on working people’
www.autoexpress.co.uk
The ban on the sale of petrol and diesel powered cars has been pushed back from 2030 to 2035, as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak attempts to reset the UK’s approach to meeting net zero targets.
All recent polls suggest delaying the ban will attract significant consumer support, but the move has dismayed the automotive industry which has been investing heavily to meet the 2030 target. Environmental campaigners too are up in arms, and the Labour party has already committed to reversing the decision if it wins the general election due next year, even though the new 2035 date is aligned with similar bans across Europe and other major global markets.
Sunak appeared to criticise his predecessor Boris Johnson as he introduced the delay to the sales ban, saying there had been such a lack of debate and fundamental scrutiny of net zero policy, and that the country has “stumbled into a consensus about the future that no one seems to be happy with.”
He went on to declare “there's nothing ambitious about simply asserting a goal for a short-term headline without being honest with the public about the tough choices and sacrifices involved, and without any meaningful democratic debate about how we get there. “The Climate Change Committee have rightly said, you don't reach net zero simply by wishing it yet. That's precisely what previous governments have done, both Labour and Conservative. No one in Westminster politics has yet had the courage to look people in the eye and explain what's really involved, and that's wrong.”
Sunak told a press conference that it’s can’t be right for Westminster to impose such decisions on working people without a properly informed debate, saying: “We seem to have defaulted to an approach which will impose unacceptable costs on hard pressed British families costs that no one was ever really told about, and which may not actually be necessary to deliver the emissions reduction that we need.”
Even without a ban, Sunak said he’s confident the majority of new car sales will be electric by 2030: “The costs are reducing, the range is improving, the charging infrastructure is growing. People are already choosing electric vehicles to such an extent that we're registering a new one every 60 seconds,” he said. “But I also think that at least for now, it should be you, the consumer that makes that choice, not government forcing you to do it.”
