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
So early in the morning and we are Importing 14% of our electricity at circa £112 per mwh.
The wind has vanished and gas and nuclear are providing 64% of demand. Just where does Milibrain think this 64% is going to come from when the gas and nuclear plants are shutdown in the next few years.
November 28, 2024
The price has just increased to £134 per mwh there being a shortage of wind all over Europe. We’re having to bid up the price to maintain the grid.
November 28, 2024
Correct; it’s deliberate. The temperature of the water has been slowly increasing and “the frog” is now feeling the heat.
The Eco Zealots are creating their vision of a de-industrialised UK …. it’s spelled out on the UK Fires Website.
November 28, 2024
+1 All true.
November 28, 2024
Ian W
I agree with you… it’s all part of the great reset… along with unfettered immigration from a lot of third world countries.
The government think globally… it’s part of levelling the world! But downwards, not upwards!
November 28, 2024
Communist Climate Change Committee CCCC
November 28, 2024
@David Andrews – certainly the UK Governments have are encouraging the off-shoring of all UK Industry and Commerce. UK Laws and Energy pricing has enforced the Import of the bare necessities, food is next. Parliament will be glad when its all gone, which seems to confirm it has be the desire of their leadership in the Socialist World of the WEF they all kowtow too
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
Plug-in hybrids would make more sense for many people I feel. Enough battery power for local trips (<30 miles) and engine backup for longer ones. However, they also add a lot of extra things to go wrong, as well as extra costs of course. I'm taking good care of my ICE and we'll see what is available in 8-10 years time…
November 28, 2024
The only thing thats missing is ….freedom of choice
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
Given that it’s Chinese, I would expect it to last just about as long as its warranty, after which it breaks down and you have to buy a new one.
November 28, 2024
I will stick with my three old cars worth perhaps £6,000 for the three. No finance cost and little depreciation. About 30p a miles. EVs cost about £1 just in finance costs and depreciation.
November 28, 2024
The 33k one will have a smaller battery the one that does 470 miles will have a large heavy and expensive battery. Likely to cost over £1 a mile this just in depreciation and finance costs and worth next to nothing after 6 years.
November 28, 2024
Build Your Dreams (BYD) is a huge chinese vehicle manufacturer ….and everyone WILL have one soon
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
November 28, 2024
Reply to reply – started by The Climate Change Act and enhanced and reinforced by Cameron, May, Johnson and Sunak administrations.
Ed Milliband’s new attack started from a high base because it had not been rowed back during 14 years of “Conservative” government.
All parties except one are the same in this (and many other) matters
November 28, 2024
@Reply – certainly the UK high, very high energy prices are at the root of killing what Industry and Commerce is left in the UK, but so are the insane laws that the UK alone out of its competitor Nations has enshrined on the Nation
November 28, 2024
de-farming, de-food production and lots of frozen grannies too!
November 28, 2024
When they abandon the insane quest for the holly grail of nett zero. The last 20% of which is either unobtainable or only at enormous financial cost, including the cost to human evolution. The route to nett zero is to be littered with the bodies of progress, which includes the car and vehicle industry. It is not just a theoretical projection, it is bappening as we write. Of urgent necesity the heretics must be caste from the temples of power.
November 28, 2024
It was a Conservative idea to fine manufacturers for selling products to consumers so limited blame attaches to Labour for perpetuating this policy. So the car makers have to pay a fine if they sell too many petrol vehicles and the boiler manufacturers have to pay a fine if they sell too many gas boilers. Of course it is not the manufacturers who will pay the fine, it will be passed on to the buyers or the companies will simply leave the UK. Why the Conservatives thought this was a good policy is a mystery but it is a bit rich for any of them to complain about it now.
Off topic: I see many Conservative MPs are going to vote both in favour of assisted dying and in favour of banning adults from smoking. So freedom of choice seems to be a topic they don’t understand at all.
November 28, 2024
Quite obviously for this government and to some extent the last one, ideology trumps common sense. Thousands of jobs lost in Port Talbot steelworks and vehicle manufacture mean nothing when set against the insane drive to net zero. Workers thrown out are just colateral damage in a war against CO2 it is not necessary to fight. If the Tories had recognised this, and done something about it, they might not have lost so heavily. As a former engineer, I hope Kemi B. does recognise it and writes a revision of net zero into policy.
November 28, 2024
Not when, IF.
IF the EU permits it since we have to move in lockstep with “our friends we’re not allowed to compete with.”
And I think that will depend on whether the WEF revises its programme of economic destruction.
I AM looking forward to the New Year; in particular 6 January when the House of Commons will be debating the Petition for another General Election. What’s the betting Keir-Ching! finds a vital reason to be out of the country.
November 28, 2024
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2021/30/section/74 If our kind host permits, here is a link to s.74 Environment Act 2021. The current farce may become even worse if Labour implements any statutory “recall” aka impounding and confiscation of vehicles deemed not to meet relevant environmental standards. This is a shocking power, inexplicably enacted without any obvious mandate by the previous Conservative government.
November 28, 2024
This is what happens when whole swathes of political leades swallow the ‘climate change, net zero, Co2 is going to kill us’ narrative.
Our contribution to global Co2 is miniscule, yet they wish to destroy all our industries and import more, just so they can bathe in their own self-righteousness.
It’s all blithering nonsense. When will they wake up and see the truth?
November 28, 2024
Not so much a government rescue the government just need to stop their deliberate and insane destruction. This was also the May, Boris, Sunak agenda. Coutinho still sitting on the fence! Supporting net zero but a bit more slowly!
November 28, 2024
Those who followed the teachings of Greta T, and helped enrich her family, will look back on their folly in years to come and feel humiliated as they try to explain to their children why life has become hell.
November 28, 2024
Labour is driving the UK to industrial collapse, economic suicide and motivation to survive on benefits owning nothing – all without vehicles.
November 28, 2024
I cannot see an anti-car anti-freedom administration wishing to save the British car industry. Once it has gone, it gives governments and local authorities the option of closing down our freedoms and travel options whilst hurting only foreign car makers (because we won’t have any of our own).
The spirit of the 4mph speed limit plus man with red flag has never gone away…..
November 28, 2024
….and if you didn’t read it last week, Northvolt the car battery manufacturer – ‘’ The chief executive of Northvolt has resigned, after the Swedish vehicle battery manufacturer filed for bankruptcy protection in the US’’
That leaves only BYD and CATL, both chinese companies in europe …and leaves the door wide open for other chinese imports
November 28, 2024
Remember ‘BritishVolt’ closed last year ….after £850million of taxpayer funding grant
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/final-grant-offer-provided-to-britishvolt
November 28, 2024
The UK car manufacturers don’t need recuing, the just need our government(s) to stop intervening ….and stop net-zero
Whats happening today to the car manufacturers will happen to all other businesses tomorrow
November 28, 2024
UK GDP is £2.5 trillion and there are 33 million working.
This means average person produces £75,000.
Average take home pay is £27,000
£48,000 per person goes on tax, profits and depreciation of assets.
November 28, 2024
Does anybody ask on what basis we are all being taken down the Net Zero rabbit hole?
Somebody needs to revisit the fundamental foundations of this religion.
Long term computer forecasting models are all based on assumptions and choice of historic data. Nobody appears to question these. They appear like tablets of stone for the priests to present to the masses.