Transportation

Does A Ban On Gas And Oil Cars Make Sense? The U.K. Will Soon Find Out


The UK government has just made a huge bet on going green. As part of an extensive environmental plan, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced that he is moving forward to 2030 the deadline on when new cars that use fossil fuel exclusively for propulsion will be banned from sale. Previously, it had been 2040. Plug-in hybrids have been given a further five-year respite, with a ban on these coming in 2035. But are these timeframes unrealistically soon? Are buyers and manufacturers ready?

The news has triggered the usual knee-jerk negativity from EV naysayers. Article comment streams have been filled with typical ill-informed arguments about electrical power coming from coal, how children mine the lithium for the batteries in the Congo, and how EVs spontaneously catch fire all the time. Electric early adopters have been playing “EV Bingo” with the responses. But there are some valid concerns, one being the high initial purchase price of EVs compared to internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, and the other being the lack of charging infrastructure.

The UK government plan does include £1.3 billion funding for charge points and some more for car purchasing grants. The funding for charging infrastructure is direly needed. DevicePilot recently collated information from 379 UK councils to show that there was considerable disparity across the UK, with £1.91 ($2.5) being spent in Scotland per capita of population, but only 45p (60c) in England. Just 20% of UK councils have plans for rolling out charging by 2025, and there will be a mere one point per 19,159 residents by the end of 2021 in England, compared to one per 6,449 people in Scotland. However, even in London, where there’s a charge point for every 2,740 people, that’s hardly enough to go around. You can’t expect everyone to buy EVs if there’s nowhere to plug them in.

However, even before the UK ban announcement, EVs had been having a bumper sales year, despite the pandemic. Every month for some time now, sales figures from the British Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) have shown major growth for EVs where every other type has been dropping like a stone. For example, in October 2020, sales of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) had nearly tripled compared to October 2019, where petrol car sales had fallen 21% and diesel car sales by 38%. The market share for BEVs is still small at 5.5% for the year to date, but that kind of growth is going to mean just a few years will be needed before they take over the market. Indeed, in Europe, EVs have already started selling more than diesel cars in Europe, according to JATO Dynamics.

There are, obviously, incentives to help the sale of EVs in the UK (currently £3,000 / $4,000) and even higher ones in several European countries, particularly France. So you could argue that a ban isn’t necessary – let the market decide with the assistances already in place. But the switchover is inevitable and coming soon if you watch the trends in pricing. Tesla has promised a $25,000 car by 2023/4, but when more Chinese EVs are sold outside the domestic market, there will be a steep drop in costs. The bestselling EV in China, the Hongguang MINI EV, is a mere $4,200. The expectation is for falling battery prices to allow price parity for EVs with ICE vehicles by 2023, but cheap Chinese options will help make them cost less sooner. By 2030, it may make no economic sense to buy an ICE car anyway.

Nevertheless, the market does need more of a push. Incumbent car manufacturers have been dragging their heels over environmental issues for years. Dieselgate brought to the fore how some of the best-known brands were willing to lie so they could maintain the status quo. They still are in denial about the arrival of BEVs, with Toyota’s president claiming Tesla isn’t a real car company, when in fact Tesla

TSLA
is now worth more than the Japanese manufacturer. There are many precedents, such as the arrival of seatbelts, which took legislation and no-compromise advertising to become the norm, but it is now estimated seatbelts have saved at least a million lives. Safety ratings such as EuroNCAP and NHTSA had to be imposed, and previous emissions standards that have improved air quality considerably were forced, not something that car manufacturers welcomed with open arms. Even though EVs are on a winning streak, the traditional companies still need incentives to move over, which could mean some fall by the wayside. But if a house is going to collapse anyway, you might as well demolish it and rebuild something newer and better.

In the US, it would seem unlikely that such a centralized strategy to force the market would work. However, even in America, there is now a consortium called ZETA that is pushing for 100% EV sales in the same timescale, by 2030. Not surprisingly, the group includes EV-only manufacturers Tesla, Lucid and Rivian as well as charger companies like Volta and ChargePoint. But there is also a good showing from other electricity-focused brands such as Siemens and ConEdison. The incoming Biden administration is also no longer denying climate change and very likely to put emphasis on a green recovery as the UK and Europe are already planning to.

The UK government’s strategy may look like a radical move, but it’s merely realizing the inevitable. BEVs are growing fast, and they’re likely to dominate the market in new sales in five years or so. The British government announcement is just accelerating an unstoppable change, and other countries could do well to follow suit.



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