Labour will reinstate the 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, if it wins power at the forthcoming general election.
Shadow roads minister Bill Esterson said the government’s decision to row back on the ban could cost the UK over £100 million in investment in electric vehicles (EVs) and related infrastructure.
Prime minister Rishi Sunak delayed the ban to 2035 during his speech on net zero last September.
Esterson pledged to reinstate the 2030 ban, while addressing members of EV trade group Recharge UK.
“The big change that has undermined the transition was Rishi Sunak saying we’re going to delay the introduction of new electric vehicles,” Esterson said.
“It gave the message to consumers that you don’t need to bother about it. Allied to all the misinformation that is out there now it has really undermined the whole movement.”
He added: “We’re committed to 2030 because we’ve got to give certainty to investors.
“Our view is that as it is looking very encouraging for Labour to get into government, we can give a very strong and clear degree of certainty that if Labour gets in it will be 2030 and you can invest on that basis if you’re confident we’re going to win.”
The Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate (ZEV) was passed into law in December 2023 and will require 80% of new cars and 70% of new vans sold in Great Britain to be zero emission by 2030, increasing to 100% by 2035.
While Esterson welcomes the introduction of the ZEV mandate, he warned that vehicle manufacturers must be given the right signals to sell more EVs.
He said: “Manufacturers have got the ZEV mandate, which is right. But unless consumers want to buy the product it makes life very difficult for them.
“We’ve seen three months where new sales of electric vehicles have fallen. The only place where it has really kept going is fleet sales. All that’s going to happen is manufacturers will reduce the number of vehicles that they’re putting on the market, so they still hit their quotas. That isn’t a good place to be. We need to increase the numbers of people buying and we need private buyers to want to buy them.
“The good news is that the second-hand market is starting to evolve, and electric vehicles are now at price parity with petrol and diesel, for second hand vehicles. But we’ve got a lot of work to do to build consumer confidence.”
A record number of electric vehicles (EVs) were sold in 2023, figures from SMMT reveal.
In total, 315,000 new EVs were sold last year, some 50,000 more than in 2022. The number of EVs sold last year is also more than the combined number of sales made in 2020 and 2021.