He then simplified this fabulously incomprehensible car-nut lingo by saying that the EU’s 2035 cut-off point for CO2-emitting cars was “no longer realistic”.
His comments were made to a conference stuffed with 3,000 of the biggest cheeses from the automotive industry gathering for a major event of the 2024 Paris Motor Show, held opposite at the grand halls of the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles.
The policy wonks in Brussels will be alarmed, say car industry experts. VW and Renault have added their voices to a growing chorus suggesting that the ban “could threaten the European automotive industry in its heart”, as explained by Zipse, and that the measures will “with today’s assumptions, lead to a massive shrinking of the industry as a whole”.
But will our own Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, have raised even an eyebrow at this? Such is his feverish eco-zeal, leaping about the country recording videos for Instagram from solar panel fields to wind farms, that he would surely shrug off the doubts of unambitious petrol heads.
Indeed, while the European car industry says the EU 2035 ban is unrealistic, Miliband continues to triumph his Labour government’s 2030 phase-out for new petrol and diesel vehicles. So his focus is on the UK building more electric charging points. “The biggest thing,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme recently, “is to get this charging infrastructure right.”
And as we’re not in the EU, we’re no longer beholden to Brussels so we can conjure our own eco-goals. Except, as the people who actually make cars keep saying, the Net Zero-obsessed political elites are living in a fantasy. This is Ed’s mission, encapsulated by his very job title, chief of Net Zero. Or as it should be: ‘Head of Pipe Dreams’.
The man is charging towards a rainbow, screaming, “Look! Look! Gold!” trampling, as he scrambles to get there, over the ashes and rusting metal of British industry.
Because that is all that’s left of UK car manufacturing, production being at its lowest level for 60 years. The reasons why are multitudinous: lack of innovation leading to sluggish exports, UK firms being bought by foreign companies who can make the cars cheaper elsewhere, global supply chain issues due to Covid and skills shortages. But our lamentable decline has been made terminal because of the drive towards electric.
UK car manufacturing slumped down a further 7.6 per cent this year as the industry lurched towards EVs. And amid fierce global competition, it is now but plankton, swallowed up by the whales of countries such as China.
All the while, the poor consumer is left scratching their head. EV cars are monstrously expensive (although, yes, cheaper to run in the long term but the initial hurdle is too high), and most of us are reluctant to convert because of range anxiety, the very real concern of running out of charge. Ed wants to reach net zero; we just dream of getting from A and B.
