Future of Roads Minister Lilian Greenwood has confirmed the Government's commitment to phase out new petrol and diesel car sales by 2030, whilst allowing hybrid vehicles to remain on sale until 2035.The announcement reinstates the Labour manifesto pledge on the transition to cleaner vehicles.FULL STORY HERE.
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00:00It is a busy day as regards car announcements today and the first thing we want to talk
00:07to you about is this differential between, I actually don't understand it to be quite
00:16truthful right, there's going to be a differential between certain cars as to whether they'll
00:20be regarded as green or not, you explain it to us.
00:27So what we're setting out today is our plans to give the British car industry certainty,
00:34stability and confidence. So we are formally confirming our manifesto commitment which
00:41is to reinstate the 2030 date for the phase out of the sale of new petrol and diesel cars
00:49but we're also confirming that in the period from 2030 to 2035 the car manufacturers will
00:55be able to continue to sell hybrid vehicles, so those either full hybrids like the Toyota
01:02Prius or the Nissan e-Power as well as those ones that can plug in and alongside that we're
01:09giving manufacturers extra flexibilities to help them to get there. So if they're selling
01:14more of those hybrid vehicles, they're cutting carbon emissions, that's the really important
01:21thing that we're going through to 2035 when all new vehicles will need to be zero emission,
01:29probably battery electric. We're also saying that for vans you'll be able to continue to
01:35buy vans which are either petrol, diesel or hybrid through to 2035 as long as the carbon
01:42emissions are coming down. And we're confirming that for those really small, yeah sure.
01:48I was just going to say there seems to be an impression that this advantage
01:53that you're introducing here is only for expensive cars, luxury cars.
01:58No, not at all. This is for all our car manufacturers, all the names that we would
02:07anticipate like Vauxhall, like Ford, like Nissan, like Jaguar Land Rover. We want to back our
02:15British car industry, we want to protect jobs, we want to create jobs. We have the
02:20opportunity for the UK to be global leaders in the transition to electric vehicles and
02:27that's why we're giving them this certainty now, setting out and that clarity so they
02:32know exactly what they can do between now and 2030 and now and through to 2035. What
02:39we are saying is for those really small and micro manufacturers, the likes of the supercars
02:45like McLaren and Lotus, we're saying that they're exempt from the mandate. They need
02:52to get to zero emission by 2035 but we're not expecting them to meet the same targets
02:59as the bigger manufacturers. So you're relaxing net zero measures. How
03:03does the Energy Secretary Ed Miliband feel about that? Because there could be a split
03:08in the Cabinet over this, couldn't there? No, we're absolutely not relaxing our commitment
03:15to getting to net zero. In fact, we're restating it. We promised in our manifesto that we would
03:22end the sale of pure diesel and petrol cars from 2030 and that's what we're confirming
03:29today. But what we are doing is making sure that we give our British car industry the
03:34opportunity to make the change to upgrade to electric vehicles in a considered way.
03:40We're listening to them. We launched a consultation just before Christmas that closed in February.
03:47We've been talking to industry intensively over recent months about the flexibilities
03:52that they need to get us to that net zero position and that's what we're confirming
03:58today. And of course we're working to give consumers confidence as well. We know that
04:04last year we had the largest EV market in Europe, record sales of EVs just last month
04:12up 43% on the previous year and that's why we're rolling out charging infrastructure
04:18across the country because we know that if people are going to make that switch they
04:22need to feel confident that when they're away from home, if they've got a charger at home,
04:27that they'll still be able to charge their car up so they can make those long journeys.