Rishi Sunak is considering weakening some of the government’s key green commitments in a major policy shift.
It could include delaying a ban on the sales of new petrol and diesel cars and phasing out gas boilers, multiple sources have told the BBC.
The PM is preparing to set out the changes in a speech in the coming days.
There is no suggestion that Mr Sunak is considering abandoning the legal commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
But he is expected to declare that other countries need to bear more of the burden of dealing with climate change.
The transition won’t happen quickly enough without it, and there still needs to be some hard incentives to get infrastructure like charging networks up.
Delaying or stopping the ban will cost more time we can ill afford.
I don’t think the future ICE ban is what is driving EV sales. It’s that they are cheap to run and have good performance. And that green feeling. The upfront cost is going down and the range is going up.
The infrastructure is going up fairly fast. Not sure it can go up much faster because of the grid having to change to. Ideally though, you charge at home anyway. I charge away from home only like 5% of the time.
I can only speak for myself but the upcoming ICE ban was a factor in my recent EV purchase. I intend to keep my car for a long time so as we move closer to the ban more and more cars will be EVs so I didn’t want to be left behind.
The other aspects you mentioned were also factors. Particularly after a test drive and feeling the acceleration and quietness of the car.
If the EV sales keep increasing as they have been, the ICE infrastructure will start to shrink and that will increase ICE costs further. There will be economic feedback loops at tipping points.
I think one tipping point may be mechanics. We need to start trainimg mechanics on ev more and then ice will be more. Even things like oil changing facility will become expensive
Then is a general question of vendor lockin with maintenance. This was an issue before EVs. We need more right to repair laws to prevent this shit.
Training for EVs will come with the market, if we can avoid this vendor lockin rubbish.
At the moment it is people with their own home and a driveway. The terrace street/on street parking and the renter’s will struggle to charge at home overnight and charging centers lack both capacity and cheapness and also reliability.
In a recent drive from Cambridge to Reading (so major south east, not even remote in any way. Nearly ran out of charge as two supermarkets were broken and another two service stations were full with people queuing with estimate of 40-60min to start charging plus the 20min charge on that.
Yer, the public changing network is always great. It is best if you can avoid it.