The U.K. vehicle industry is in sharp decline. Honda pulled out of Swindon and announced all of Europe will be supplied from Japan given falling volumes. Ford quit assembling vehicles here sometime ago and is now cutting jobs in its component manufacture. Vauxhall is closing one of its two van making factories. Jaguar has lost a lot sales and is now rebranding with a policy of shedding up to 85% of its remaining customers and doubling typical prices. This is not likely to add volume.
The remaining car makers are lobbying hard to get a change in the deeply damaging battery car mandate. The last government put in fines up to 2030 for selling too many petrol and diesel cars as a percentage of the total. The targets are unrealistic so the companies face a £15,000 a vehicle charge.Labour came into office and took five years off the time to go all electric making it impossible.
The Industry Secretary says he feels their pain and will make changes. However he is talking about change in January, after the end of the first year where the current law imposes these fines if they sold less than 22% battery vehicles. He also says he will not change the steep path of battery sales to reach 100% by 2030, which looks unlikely given consumer resistance unless the market is swamped with much cheaper Chinese imports.
This crisis is now. They have lost one plant this week. Other plants are at risk if they fail to change rapidly. It is no good pretending everyone will switch to a U.K. produced battery car when more than four fifths of consumers say they want petrol or diesel. Keir Starmer said he would not tell us how to lead our lives,yet when it comes to the very important decision of what personal transport to have that is exactly what he is doing.
November 28, 2024
The only sensible option for a UK manufacturer is to wind down UK operations. It is impossible to run a business of the complexity, scale and financial commitment needed to engineer, design and make cars in volume when governments chop and change the boundaries of the playing field and keep changing the rules of the game. The industry will go the way of the many others that have quit the UK.
November 28, 2024
You are dealing with a religion John
It’s not in the governments gift to abolish these targets. Responsibility has been passed to the unelected Climate Change Committee which has the full backing of our left wing lawyers.
We are reaching the end of the current 5 year plan for cutting emissions and all the low hanging fruit has been consumed. Shutting down steep, aluminium, fertiliser and swathes of other industries
The next 5 year plan involves the decarbonisation of the electricity grid and as the CCC says ripping up the gas distribution network
The electorate are slowly wakening up to the destruction being wrought upon us by the lying cheating uniparty.
There are no skilled well paid jobs in the green industries only endless subsidies
The loss of Vauxhall is but the latest manifestation of the damage being caused by a handful of WEF zealots.
Repealing the Climate change act is the only sensible thing but this will never happen with this bunch of cowboys except for Reform in parliament.
You are quite aware of this.
It’s deliberate destruction of our lifestyle.
November 28, 2024
Good morning.
First off, I do not believe anything this PM or government says, nto that I believed any of the previous ones either.
One area where this government may help is by :
a) abolishing / raising the level / reducing the luxury Car Tax introduced by the last govenment in 2017.
b) making offering a company car a better deal for companies and company car drivers. This will help increase demand.
With the reduced amounts of energy we will be producing each year the attractiveness of BEV’s will rapidly decline. Speaking from my own experience after running a Hybrid for over a year, they are much better.
November 28, 2024
I saw an advert on the TV yesterday for a car made by BYD. I’m fairly sure it claimed some fairly immense range – 470 miles I think (might have been 420, not sure, it was in that area).. Unusually for car adverts these days, it mentioned a price – starting from £33k. So, still not cheap. And from a brand that is new to the U.K. and which, as yet, I have no reason to trust.
November 28, 2024
Good Morning,
Perhaps the automotive industry is, in the words of a Labour adviser, ‘an industry we can do without’? How many other industries has Starmer been told to destroy in our Nation….
Every major economic action this government has taken since coming into office has been damaging to our productivity; what is going on?
Reply Deliberate deindustrialisation through dear energy and forced transition away from fossil fuels