The Fuel Types of Vehicles Sold Between 2030 & 2035 Really Do Matter: Here’s Why

This is the first in a series of blogs which summarises New AutoMotive’s response to the Government’s consultation on phasing out sales of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 and supporting the ZEV transition. You can find a summary of our consultation response elsewhere on the New AutoMotive website.

Government has been pretty clear in its consultation response that it does not favour the continued sale of pure ICE vehicles from 2030 onward:

Question 1: Do you agree with the Government’s view that full hybrid and plug-in hybrid technologies only should be considered? Please explain your answer.

But is pretty open to continued sales of hybrid electric vehicles, in spite of the previous administration’s original intention (before the previous Prime Minister’s unsuccessful attempt to chase votes by  weakening the target) to only allow vehicles with “significant zero emissions capability”:

Question 2: Do you prefer a technological definition that permits both HEVs and PHEVs, or a technological definition that permits PHEVs only? Please explain your answer.

This is reinforced by its analysis which suggests that there’s really nothing very much in any of the options and hybrids are almost as good anyway:

Page 36, “Phasing out the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 and Support for the Zero Emission Transition“

We’d beg to differ with that viewpoint.

Let’s briefly note some obvious challenges to the presentation of the data above - why is there no detail of the assumed minimum range for plug-in hybrids, to which the saving will be sensitive? Why average the long term emissions saving in the rightmost column over the period from 2024-2050 when it’s obvious there will be no emissions impact between 2024 and 2030, before the policy change even applies? Why round everything to 1 decimal place when three-quarters of the numbers in the rightmost column are 0.1 or 0.2, making the scale of the differences almost impossible to determine?

However, let’s park those considerations and note this next chart, which concerns changes to the reported emissions of plug–in hybrids which Government is proposing will take effect through the 2020s (although it hasn’t consulted on that yet and doesn’t have a firm proposal on).

Page 15, “Phasing out the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 and Support for the Zero Emission Transition“

The Utility Factor (UF) change will increase the reported emissions of PHEVs, bringing them close to the levels of hybrid electric vehicles, and thereby eroding the emissions saving from a switch to vehicles with Significant Zero Emissions Capability. Which produces that shoulder-shrugging-meh-all-much-of-a-muchness table of emission savings above and suggests that there’s no real harm in allowing plug-less hybrid cars to be sold from 2030.

We think this might be too hasty. The utility factor changes above, which we’ll cover in a future blog, have been made in response to the finding that PHEV drivers are driving less often with a battery than previously modelled, as drivers don’t bother to charge the battery between journeys.

However, studies of real world PHEV emissions performance show that a much greater share of non-battery driving comes from company car users, who are incentivised to take on the vehicles due to generous tax incentives but more weakly incentivised to charge them (and may even be perversely discouraged from doing so by company expenses policies).

However, much higher Benefit in Kind (BiK) rates for company-owned PHEVs announced at the last Budget will make them considerably less attractive for this group of drivers, winnowing out consumers attracted by the prospect of a “petrol-like” car at low tax rates, and leaving buyers who have made a conscious decision to adopt the technology - exactly the people who are more likely to charge. Alongside this, average PHEV range has jumped from 30 miles in 2019 to 50 miles in 2023, easily far enough to carry out return journeys amounting to 45% of annual miles travelled by car, with no tailpipe emissions. A battery range of 70 miles, which Government could set as a legal minimum, would allow electrification of 58% of miles on a battery charged in the 10-80% range.

The analysis above also fails to recognise that the transition is behavioural as much as technological. Ensuring that all vehicles sold between 2030 and 2034 carried a battery charged from the mains demystifies electrification, enabling even people who are sceptical to gain familiarity with the technology and recognise the benefits of switching. In the worst case, it will do no harm apart from the increase in weight - which need have no impact on vehicle efficiency and has a negligible impact on road wear.

So we would gently suggest that Government’s analysis, for all its opacity, is unduly pessimistic. PHEVs can have a significant emissions saving impact.

Our analysis carried out with originally estimated PHEV emissions suggests that the impact of only allowing PHEVs and not Hybrid (or ICE) vehicles could save greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 35 million tonnes of CO₂ between 2030 and 2050.

Quite reasonably we all have difficulty engaging with these sorts of numbers, so here is what it means for some other Government decarbonisation dilemmas. Government could allow continued sale of plug-less vehicles and still meet its carbon budgets, but it would have to do at least one or more of the following:

• Increase the proportion of currently non-existent but extremely popular zero-emission Sustainable Aviation Fuels used in all flights from the UK by around 50% by 2030.

• Reach its target of 600,000 heat pump installations by next year instead of 2028. The current level is about 60,000, one-tenth of the target.

• Reduce the emissions of shipping by 25% by 2030. MPs recently concluded that Government had no plan for cutting the emissions from shipping.

Each of these actions is far harder than simply not allowing hybrid electric vehicles, which was the previous administration’s plan, before Uxbridge didn’t change anything, and which Labour committed to in its manifesto (extract above).

Ministers like to make much of being unafraid to take the tough decisions when called to step up, but often the right decision is the really easy and obvious one. It’s to end the sale of hybrid electric vehicles in 2030 and stem the tide of an additional 400,000 more vehicles on the road which are “zero emissions incapable” in 2050.

It is the alternatives, reliant on impossibly fast technological development and rollout, which are tough. In fact they’re impossible.