Carmageddon
It’s a car crash
Posted on 09 Jan 25
by Mark HodgsonIn Electric vehicles, National Grid, Net Zero, politics, Stats, Uncategorized
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 24th 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.”
https://cliscep.com/2025/01/09/carmageddon/
