A couple of days ago an article at The Conversation listed four reasons why electric vehicle targets shouldn’t be weakened. Naturally, since I am a great believer that the EV targets should be weakened, and in fact, cancelled altogether, I was interested to know what these four reasons were, and whether they had any merit. Here they are, with my commentary.
The background to this, for posterity, is the UK government’s ever-tightening mandate forcing manufacturers to sell EVs. This year, the requirement is for 1/3 vehicles to be EVs. The manufacturers did not meet the lower quota last year, but were able to fudge things by borrowing against future sales and by fakery involving plug-in hybrids (it’s complicated). The manufacturers are now demanding that the ratchet should stop tightening as fast as it is, because it’s beginning to hurt.
- Risk of repeating the industry’s past mistakes
The argument here is by analogy with resistance against a different mandate in a different era on a different continent. Manufacturers successfully opposed the CAFE standards in the United States; when there was a spike in oil prices, Japanese vehicles succeeded because they had been following their own domestic fuel standard rules, and were therefore more fuel efficient, and an attractive purchase.
Was reluctance to produce fuel-efficient vehicles really a mistake of the industry? Yes, probably. But it would have been sensible of them to produce a range of vehicles, regardless of any imposed standards. And it seems strange to invoke the effect of an external shock as proof of anything. What if the next shock is… I dunno… a lithium shortage, say? What if a geopolitical rival just happened to choke off the supply of a particular metal, without which new EVs could not be built?
Also in this section it is mentioned that climate benefits are more diffuse than the cost in immediately lost jobs. The authors don’t put it in those terms, but as we know, UK climate action generally results in a local cost being paid for a benefit that is either entirely fictional, or is spread thinly around the globe including to countries that are not making any emissions cuts.
- Uncertainty can slow investment
Yes. So it’s best to end the uncertainty now, by cancelling the mandate. Eventually it will be cancelled anyway. The direction of travel at the moment is a gradual erosion of the mandate. [Only last year, all the “flexibilities” were brought in to allow manufacturers to meet their target, without meeting it.] Let’s just get rid in one go, yeh?
- Jobs need long-term protection
The argument goes that we will still need cars, so we will still need jobs in car manufacturing, including battery manufacturing, etc. The prophesied loss of employment in vehicle manufacturing is therefore exaggerated. We need to boost demand for EVs, so we keep the jobs.
So says the article. Well, the evidence at the moment is that the mandated EVs are going to be manufactured in China. There will still be jobs; they will just be somewhere else.
- Fear of losing UK export edge
The UK exports a lot of vehicles. We can’t be left behind in developing EVs, or we’ll lose those markets to, er, China.
Well, if we aren’t going to manufacture our own EVs, we’re not likely to export many.
According to reports, JLR is going to carry on making petrol cars come what may, i.e., if they are banned here, and ship them to America to sell them there. This seems to be evidence that the UK should continue to make vehicles that other countries want to buy, rather than try to undercut Chinese EVs somehow.
Reasons to be cheerful?
Are there any reasons to go on with the ZEV mandate? I can’t think of any. At the moment, two great forces are at work trying to get people into EVs. There are the carrots of enormous tax benefits for company cars and cheaper energy (because petrol is subject to duty), and the stick of fines for manufacturers if they fail to reach sales targets. Even with a table tilted in their favour and manufacturer discounts, EV numbers are falling short. As an old-fashioned liberal, I think people should be able to buy the vehicle they want, subject to it not causing harm to others. I do not believe that a new petrol or diesel car causes any measurable harm to anyone. On that basis, there are no grounds to ban the sale of such vehicles.
We know that cars with engines are more suitable for some people than EVs. It should be for them to pick their car, not the government.
/message ends
PS. The conversation below the discussed article at The Conversation was quite civilised, last I checked. No sign of the authors, however.
P2S. I asked the AI for a showroom full of Jaecoo E5s, such as caught fire on the dockside a few days ago. Instead, it has given me J7s. Oh well! It’s quite a good effort.
Climate Scepticism 
The authors of The Conversation article end it thus:
I find that more than a little disappointing. It’s a short sentence, but there is so much that is contentious in it.
First, the blithe reference to a “green” transition. This, I assume, involves the whole of the net zero paraphernalia, not just EVs. There are many arguments that the transition isn’t green at all. Of course, that raises the question if what it is to be green. I take the word to refer to the whole environment, and so I question how green it is to blanket farmland in solar panels and our wild places in wind farms. I wonder at the wisdom of BESS, with attendant fire risks and associated environmentally damaging mining. But if we limit the concept of “green” to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions (strange, I know, but some people do), then as Sir Dieter Helm suggests, there is a strong argument that the UK’s focus on consumption emissions within its net zero target is actually increasing global emissions.
Secondly, the authors obviously recognise that the transition involves costs, but they are blithely unconcerned about them. Arguably worse, they just assume that the costs should be borne by firms and their shareholders, rather than by workers and the public. But who do they think the shareholders are? Directly or indirectly, it’s often the public, via pension funds and other financial institutions, investing our money to pay our pensions and interest on our savings.
If business costs in the UK go up, businesses have limited options. They can relocate abroad; they can go bust; they can reduce their wage costs by cutting their workforce and/or reducing wages; they can increase the price of the products they sell to the public.
None of this is difficult to understand. The best solution is to avoid the costs of the transition in the first place, unless it can be shown beyond peradventure that the real (as opposed to putative) benefits exceed the costs. Nobody has yet established that, certainly not to my satisfaction.
It’s all very simplistic and disappointing at The Conversation, especially as its articles are written by senior academics. But at least, as Jit observed, on this occasion the discussion in the comments remained relatively polite, so that’s something.
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Meanwhile, in the real world:
“JLR at risk of battery supply delays after Somerset factory Turmoil
Supplier Agratas sacks its main building contractor on the government-backed project amid a budget mismatch”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/20/jaguar-land-rover-jlr-battery-supply-delay-somerset-agratas
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Well, that will teach me to make comments using only my phone (rather than the laptop) and not using my reading glasses. I see that the closing sentence I pilloried was actually:
“…delaying the green transport transition just moves costs from firms and their shareholders to workers and the public.“
So, not the whole net zero thing, as I wrongly suggested. Mea culpa.
However, I would still argue that my fundamental point remains correct, even in this more limited context:
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Its not EV bein’ green.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_the_Frog#/media/File:Kermit_puppet.jpg
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