New Petrol & Diesel Cars Banned In The UK From 2040, Now 2030

[Robin]

New diesel and petrol cars and vans will be banned in the UK from 2040 in a bid to tackle air pollution, the government is set to announce. Ministers are to unveil a £255m fund to help councils introduce steps to deal with pollution from diesel vehicles as part of £3bn spending on air quality. The government will publish a court-mandated clean air strategy later, days before a High Court deadline. Campaigners said the measures were promising, but more detail was needed.

The government was ordered by the courts to produce new plans to tackle illegal levels of harmful pollutant nitrogen dioxide. It came after the courts agreed with environmental campaigners that previous plans were insufficient to meet EU pollution limits. Ministers had to set out their draft clean air strategy plans in May with the final measures due by 31 July.

Local measures could include retrofitting buses and other transport to make them cleaner, changing road layouts, altering features such as speed humps and re-programming traffic lights to make vehicle-flow smoother. Campaigners want government-funded and mandated clean air zones, with charges for the most-polluting vehicles to enter areas with high air pollution, included in the plans, as well as a diesel scrappage scheme.

But ministers have been wary of being seen to "punish" drivers of diesel cars, who, it argues, bought the vehicles in good faith after being encouraged to by the last Labour government on the basis they produced lower carbon emissions. The UK announcement comes amid signs of an accelerating shift towards electric cars instead of petrol and diesel ones both at home and abroad:

- Earlier this month, President Emmanuel Macron announced similar plans to phase out diesel and petrol cars in France, also from 2040.
- BMW announced on Tuesday that a fully electric version of the Mini will be built at the Cowley plant in Oxford from 2019.
- Swedish carmaker Volvo has said all new models will have an electric motor from the same year.

Thoughts?

I would think by then everything sold would be electric, possibly even years before the deadline. There might be a reasonable amount of combustion engined cars still around unless the government does some scrappage scheme. It might make getting fuel difficult for owners of older and classic cars as petrol stations will likely disappear or be replaced with charging.

End of an era...

 

[05XR8]

I don't know about those fossil fuel markets. they are not going to lose money. So, do they start buying up materials required for electric cars(that's they haven't already)? What incentives/grants/funding are petrol franchises going to get for going electric? How do the stock markets react?

How about people that only can afford cars for under 2grand(pounds, dollars, euros)? Will any car maker have electric cars for under 5grand by then?
Are there government incentives for crushing your petrol vehicle and wanting to get an electric vehicle? Or do we see a "Back to The Future" hover(electric) conversion company spawn?

 

[TVR27]

I think this will have a big negative affect on the UK economy and how are people going to afford new electric cars the other problem is re sale value for electric cars would be bad because of dead batterys and software design to fail after set amount of years.

 

[desmodan]

Sounds about right to me . A load of wild promises and deadlines before there's anything close to a viable replacement in sight .
As for £255M for local authorities , I know it sounds like a lot of money , but that will go nowhere !

 

[Dave A]

The big problem here is that this won't tackle pollution, cars are not the primary pollutant in the country, power stations are much higher on the list, and if we all drive electric cars we'll need more of those.

 

[desmodan]

The big problem here is that this won't tackle pollution, cars are not the primary pollutant in the country, power stations are much higher on the list, and if we all drive electric cars we'll need more of those.

Plus many of these stations including the new project an Hinckley are owned by the French . So I guess we all know how that's gonna turn out with brexit ?

 

[m8h3r]

Sounds about right to me . A load of wild promises and deadlines before there's anything close to a viable replacement in sight .
As for £255M for local authorities , I know it sounds like a lot of money , but that will go nowhere !

That's about 6 pot holes filled and a new cafeteria trolley for one of the trains.

It does feel like a bit of a knee jerk reaction to the French one that went through (?)(did it) a few months ago.

 

[Touring Mars]

Bad news for McLaren-Honda, as they might have just sorted out their engine issues by then...

On a more serious note, I'm guessing this could be bad news for the future of 'conventional' motorsport (including F1) in the UK, and probably in the rest of Europe as well.

 

[05XR8]

Bad news for McLaren-Honda, as they might have just sorted out their engine issues by then...

On a more serious note, I'm guessing this could be bad news for the future of 'conventional' motorsport (including F1) in the UK, and probably in the rest of Europe as well.

20 years til then. I'd be surprised if a high level of motorsport, isn't radio/wi fi controlled at some point, with additional AI cars to make up numbers on the grid.

 

[Robin]

The government really hasn't thought this through, we still burn a great deal of coal to meet are energy demands and are currently running at something like 98% capacity and they want to connect every car and truck in the UK to the national grid?! There will be power cuts everyday after work when people get home and plug them in!

This would require a huge investment in renewable energy and plenty of new power stations. Seeing as its going to be a living nightmare and extremely expensive to even get Hinckley Point C up and running where is this extra power generation coming from? If we are still going to be burning fossil fuels your just planting the pollution elsewhere.

 

[05XR8]

maybe people with homes can afford a Powerwall(if it's authorised in the UK), but people living in flats, how's that going to work?

 

[MrCrynox]

The big problem here is that this won't tackle pollution, cars are not the primary pollutant in the country, power stations are much higher on the list, and if we all drive electric cars we'll need more of those.

Even worse than the power stations. Airplanes. In 2005 jet engines were dumping 600million tonnes of CO2 directly into the atmosphere every year! By now that figure is only much higher. As well as this jet engines also emit NOx the same as the diesel car. The aviation industry is the biggest culprit of 'global warning' yet a global blind eye is behind taken to this. Why ?

These days the ICE is completely strangled by emissions defeating devices which are very effective at pretty much culling all emissions.

This is going to cost the average motorist a massive amount as we are all going to be forced out of our normal cars into an electric nightmare whilst the aviation industry continues to pollute and get away scott free.

And let's not forget the huge hike in price for electric for home owners.

If the world governments really cared about the environment all the planes should be grounded until a solution is implemented as banning the ICE at ground level will have little to no effect, especially as they are going to be using Nuclear and Fossil power to generate all the extra electricity.

What's wrong with Honda's hydrogen car solution ?

They haven't really thought about any of this, the world had gone mad.

 

[Touring Mars]

Unless I'm mistaken, it's not so much a question of overall pollution or the impact on climate change etc., but the problem of localised pollution at street level that is affecting public health more directly... as such, pollution from planes, ships etc. is not as directly hazardous to people going about their daily lives.

 

[FT-1]

By banning the sale of cars with conventional internal combustion engines, does that include hybrid cars? Volvo announced the move to go all-electric, but they will still produce cars with mild hybrid setups.

 

[Famine]

If we are still going to be burning fossil fuels your just planting the pollution elsewhere.

Coal power generation is 55% efficient now (55% of the possible energy of burning it makes electricity). Petrol engines are 35% efficient at best (35% of the possible energy of burning it makes movement). Replacing petrol with electric means 60% more movement from burning things - and it moves the pollutants from burning things away from people in cities at ground level where they breathe it in to in the sky away from them.

Besides which, we recently managed to generate all of our power without coal for a day.


More important is the fact that any legislation on this front is meaningless. We're talking about 23 years from now. 23 years ago, what did the electric car look like? For that matter, what did the car look like?

We now have every major manufacturer offering hybrid, PHEV and BEV cars. We have a charging network that means no-one is ever further away from charging their electric car than any electric car's range - and with sufficient capacity to charge every full EV on the road at once. What's that going to look like in 23 years?

The speed of development on EVs (and lack of it on ICE) will ensure that, by 2040 (if not by 2025), EVs will have at least as much range, as much performance and be no more expensive than ICE vehicles - many already hit two from three, and some are close on all three - and once you reach that point people will buy them in preference to ICE and market forces will take care of the rest.

Which sucks for those of us with nice, old ICE cars, because the petrol station will be an anachronism by then.

By banning the sale of cars with conventional internal combustion engines, does that include hybrid cars? Volvo announced the move to go all-electric, but they will still produce cars with mild hybrid setups.

Nobody is 100% sure, but the proposal seems to ban any car with any ICE. Including hybrids, PHEV and REV.

 

[gladbecker82]

The Powers that be making you less and less independent. First they come for our cash. Now our means of transportation.

Not to mention that all this stuff about climate change is only really pushed in western countries. The rest of the world like Turkey for example only wants to participate cause its free money

 

[RaceFuchs]

I'm guessing this could be bad news for the future of 'conventional' motorsport (including F1) in the UK, and probably in the rest of Europe as well.

By then, the F1 will be a pure electric series, just like the Le Mans winner will be an all-electric car. Its a trend that can't be stopped, unfortunately. Mercedes-Benz has just announced they will leave DTM. Where are they heading? Formula E, of course. Audi has left the WEC. Where are they heading? Formula E, of course. Porsche will probably do the same thing. We petrol heads don't like it but there is nothing we can do about it.

The new Corvette will have a turbo engine, days of thunder-sound are gone. The next Corvette after that will probably be a silent electric car. Sad.

 

[TVR27]

The Powers that be making you less and less independent. First they come for our cash. Now our means of transportation.

Not to mention that all this stuff about climate change is only really pushed in western countries. The rest of the world like Turkey for example only wants to participate cause its free money

I agree.

 

[Famine]

The Powers that be making you less and less independent. First they come for our cash. Now our means of transportation.

Are they taking cars off people now? This is a proposed ban on the sale of new ICE cars, not a proposed taking ICE cars off the road or a used car sales ban.

Amusingly, the UK government gets around 10% of its entire income from tax on ICE cars - road tax, VAT on sales and fuel duty (and VAT on that) - and while the sales component will still exist, it'd lose a LOT of money if 100% of the vehicle parc was electric...

 

[homeforsummer]

The big problem here is that this won't tackle pollution, cars are not the primary pollutant in the country, power stations are much higher on the list, and if we all drive electric cars we'll need more of those.

That's a slightly narrow viewpoint, but not an uncommon one.

The UK's power grid has been getting gradually cleaner over time, and in recent years particularly the proportion of renewable sources has risen sharply - over a quarter in 2016. There's little reason to expect the trend to reverse, so generally power generation will become cleaner. Cleaner still if we continue the other energy trend, which is importing (mostly nuclear) energy from France rather than relying so heavily on natural gas ( which is just shy of half the UK's domestic energy) and coal (around 20%, i.e. less coal than renewables).

Cars are getting cleaner too of course, but then cars on an individual level will get dirtier - engines wear and degrade over time and produce greater emissions than they did when new. Electric cars do not - an electric car gets cleaner over time, because the grid does too. That's completely ignoring that an electric motor uses energy more efficiently than a combustion engine in the first place, so they're already proportionally cleaner than conventional vehicles unless the grid is hugely coal-biased.

Then there's the local pollution debate - power stations don't tend to be located where people live, so the local impact of cars is greater than the local impact of power stations.

And then there's the whole "PANIC!!!!!!" element of decisions like this. I'd expect the majority of cars in 23 years time will be EVs anyway, or at least electrified, and the industry, grid, and the public will all have adapted in a gentle curve, rather than a sudden BAN EVERYTHING NOW shock on the market.

 

[sems4arsenal]

One evil thought that always comes to my mind is that, what this will do, is delay the inevitable. If the planet is already doomed, does it make sense to fight it? It's a dark and arguably unintelligent thought -- but it makes you think.

 

[Clark]

I thought one issue about EVs etc. was the pollution involved in mining/refining/whatever the materials needed for the batteries. I may be wrong about this I just remember seeing about it before.

 

[Famine]

If the planet is already doomed

The planet isn't doomed. Well, any more than its inevitable destruction by cosmic forces (in 4-7 billion years), but then you may as well say that if you're going to die in 100 years, killing you now wouldn't be a problem.

The processes that are being put into place to combat pollution and possible anthropogenic climate change are just for human comfort, not the planet.

 

[sems4arsenal]

The planet isn't doomed. Well, any more than its inevitable destruction by cosmic forces (in 4-7 billion years), but then you may as well say that if you're going to die in 100 years, killing you now wouldn't be a problem.

The processes that are being put into place to combat pollution and possible anthropogenic climate change are just for human comfort, not the planet.

Isn't it? I've been reading several articles for a while regarding this and it seems we're past the point of no return. (or have passed it for a while now).

 

[gladbecker82]

Are they taking cars off people now?

In Germany the Government can take your kids for "hatespeech", what makes you think they cant take your car "to save the planet"?

The majority wont even question it cause it wont effect them.

Amusingly, the UK government gets around 10% of its entire income from tax on ICE cars - road tax, VAT on sales and fuel duty (and VAT on that) - and while the sales component will still exist, it'd lose a LOT of money if 100% of the vehicle parc was electric...

Tax electricity more. Easy. And do it slowly and nobody cares again.

Isn't it? I've been reading several articles for a while regarding this and it seems we're past the point of no return. (or have passed it for a while now).

Al Gore said in the early 2000s that the world would be doomed right now. Well it isnt. Its mostly fear mongering to tax us more and sell us all sorts of feel good stuff.

And as i said above - they are only targeting western countries who already have very higher standards on energy - unlike India or China who each have a bigger population than Europe, the Americas and OZ/NZ combined. Carbon tax is wealth distribution.

Erdogan of Turkey says he is no longer interested cause there isnt any money from the US to get from now. Doesnt sound like he took it seriously

 

[Famine]

Isn't it? I've been reading several articles for a while regarding this and it seems we're past the point of no return. (or have passed it for a while now).

The second paragraph is relevant at this point:

The processes that are being put into place to combat pollution and possible anthropogenic climate change are just for human comfort, not the planet.

We live on an 8,000 mile wide ball of rock that weighs six million, billion, billion tonnes. Our best efforts to cut into it have got 8 miles in (0.1%) - and that's a tube 9 inches across. Our best efforts to blow it up moved about 50,000 tonnes of it. We couldn't destroy it if we tried.

We can only destroy it for ourselves.

In Germany the Government can take your kids for "hatespeech", what makes you think they cant take your car "to save the planet"?

We're not Germany - holocaust denial and swastikas aren't illegal here. That aside, there's no connection between this and a ban on the sale of new ICE cars.

A ban on selling things is not the same thing as making existing things illegal.

The majority wont even question it cause it wont effect them.

Yeah, except the majority are car owners.

Tax electricity more. Easy. And do it slowly and nobody cares again.

That's certainly likely, but replacing 7% of the exchequer's income from fuel with tax on electricity (production; consumption isn't taxed in the UK other than VAT for domestic supplies) won't be easy even if phased in for the next 23 years.

 

[gladbecker82]

Yeah, except the majority are car owners.

Of course. But will the majority in 2040 be ICE owners? Doubtful

 

[TheCracker]

Of course. But will the majority in 2040 be ICE owners? Doubtful

By 2040 anything with an internal combustion engine will seem pre-historic. In ten years time cars that are purely ICE propelled will be in a minority. As already mentioned, the range of pure electrics and hybrids will be equal to ICE vehicles and the infrastructure to support them will be widespread. When 2040 arrives, ICE vehicles will seem antiquated. There'll still be an enthusiastic following for them and i doubt they'll be entirely banned from our roads (or race circuits) for a long time after 2040.

 

[Famine]

Of course. But will the majority in 2040 be ICE owners? Doubtful

Why would they need to have their cars taken off them then? Or do you not consider EVs to be transportation?


Just for reference, no-one's had their leaded fuel cars taken off them - or even made illegal - despite it no longer being possible to supply them as new, and bloody difficult to find the fuel for them. And leaded fuel causes brain damage as well as all of the respiratory fun of NOx. These cars still exist.

There's no need for anyone to take any cars off anyone, because they represent such a small fraction of the cars on the road that it's literally a waste of money to even think of the campaign, never mind enact it. The uptake of EV/HEV cars has increased by a factor of 25 in five years. ICE will be the minority by 2025, just as leaded fuel cars did.

 

[homeforsummer]

I thought one issue about EVs etc. was the pollution involved in mining/refining/whatever the materials needed for the batteries. I may be wrong about this I just remember seeing about it before.

This is also significantly overplayed.

Electric car batteries are currently responsible for only a tiny fraction of all the lithium mined for other uses - such as phones and laptops used by billions, rather than hundreds of thousands of people. Even so, lithium is highly recyclable, so it's not much of a problem anyway.

There was a big fuss a few years ago about nickel used in Prius batteries, with scary-looking photos of the Sudbury nickel mine in Canada as "proof" that it was destructive... but the wasteland photos were taken in the 1970s or something, both before hybrids and before the area had been massively cleaned up thanks to legislation. In 2004 Toyota's share of all the nickel mined there was about half of a percent.

Incidentally, the linked article points out that nickel is a significant element in stainless steel and in alloys used in engines, so there's also that.

And the rest of the car is broadly equal to any other car in terms of materials used, whether that's steel or aluminium for bodywork or whatever. A 1500kg electric car or a 1500kg petrol car is still 1500kg of raw materials turned into a car.