Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether he has made an assessment of the potential impact of the cost fuel on the level of car sales in 2022.
Answered by Richard Holden - Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)
While the Department does monitor electricity cost variation and the impact on electric vehicle uptake, through the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles, no such recent assessment has been made by the Department of the cost of fuel and the impact on car sales.
Asked by: Carol Monaghan (Scottish National Party - Glasgow North West)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether he plans to take further steps with Cabinet colleagues to encourage road users to transition away from petrol and diesel vehicles, in the context of Net Zero targets.
Answered by Jesse Norman
The Government recognises that a whole package of measures is needed to support the switch to zero emission driving.
HM Treasury has ensured that EVs continue to benefit from a favourable tax regime. There are now over a million plug-in vehicles on UK roads, the majority of which are exempt or pay minimal VED. From 2025, electric vehicles will still have preferential first year rates of VED in comparison to the most polluting vehicles. There are also preferential rates of company car tax for EVs out to April 2028. These measures will continue to support the uptake of electric vehicles.
Ministers across government departments continue to collaborate on the implementation of the Net Zero Strategy. In the Strategy, the Government announced that it will introduce a zero emission vehicle mandate, setting targets for a percentage of manufacturers' new car and van sales to be zero emission each year from 2024. The Government will shortly publish more details on the design of the ZEV mandate, including uptake trajectories, and accompanying CO2 emissions regulation.
Asked by: Wera Hobhouse (Liberal Democrat - Bath)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent assessment he has made of the impact of the increase in the cost of charging electric vehicles via the public charging network on drivers of those vehicles.
Answered by Jesse Norman
Industry statistics show that new UK electric vehicle sales overtook diesel sales in 2022, with over 1 in every 5 cars sold having a plug. It is clear that the public continue to realise the benefits of switching to electric vehicles.
The vast majority of drivers of electric vehicles continue to benefit from significant savings on the cost of fuel. It is still cheaper to charge a vehicle on slow and fast public charge points than to fill up a petrol or diesel car, according to average industry statistics from November 2022.
Charging at rapid and ultra-rapid public charge points is on average around the same or slightly more expensive than the cost of filling up a petrol car. However, relatively few drivers solely rely on these chargers for a large part of their charging demand.
Charging a medium-sized electric car at home at rates equivalent to the electricity price cap from 1 October 2022 equates to around half the cost of filling up an equivalent petrol vehicle. Some suppliers continue to offer tariffs enabling drivers to run their electric vehicle at under 3p per mile, while charging overnight.
Asked by: Mark Pawsey (Conservative - Rugby)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment he has of whether his proposal to phase out non-zero emission L-Category vehicle sales by 2035 will encourage manufacturers of those vehicles to leave the UK market.
Answered by Jesse Norman
In February 2022, the Motorcycle Industry Association and Zemo Partnership published a government-commissioned action plan, “Realising the Full Potential of Zero Emission Powered Light Vehicles”, to support the transition to zero emission L-category vehicles. The Government has also made up to £350,000 of funding available to grow the zero-emission motorcycle supply chain in the UK that could lead to thousands of new jobs and the Government continues to work with investors through our Automotive Transformation Fund to build a globally competitive electric vehicle supply chain in the UK.
The consultation on when to end the sale of new non-zero emission L-category vehicles was open to written responses from 14 July to 21 September 2022. The Department is in the process of analysing the responses and will bring forward the Government’s response in due course which will consider impacts to industry.
Asked by: Amy Callaghan (Scottish National Party - East Dunbartonshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he has had discussions with Cabinet colleagues on the potential impact of the Autumn Statement 2022 on the planned timetable for the transition to zero emission vehicles.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
The Chancellor meets regularly with his Cabinet colleagues on a range of issues.
The EV transition continues at pace, with new electric car registrations increasing by 76% in 2021 compared to 2020, and sales of used pure electric cars reaching a record high. The success of this transition in normalising EVs on our roads means that it’s right to begin to bring electric vehicles into the motoring tax system, ensuring that all motorists start to pay a fairer tax contribution.
Leveraging VED on EVs is not expected to significantly impact purchasing decisions. The government remains committed to its net zero objectives and will continue to offer a range of incentives to encourage the uptake of EVs.
Asked by: Baroness Randerson (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the FairCharge report Driving away from fossil fuels: consumer attitudes to electric vehicles, published in July, whether they will introduce the recommendations that (1) "the proportion of new cars required to be Battery Electric Vehicles should be set at the level of the Climate Change Committee’s Balanced Net Zero Pathway", and (2) there should be "further consumer incentives for lower income drivers, such as zero-interest loan schemes".
Answered by Baroness Vere of Norbiton - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The UK zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate will set targets requiring a percentage of manufacturers’ new car and van sales to be zero emission each year from 2024. The technical consultation on the design of this ZEV mandate and proposed trajectories closed in June 2022. The Department is now analysing consultation responses, and will bring forward the Government’s response, and a full regulatory proposal, in due course.
The Government has no plans to introduce a zero-interest loan scheme for electric vehicle (EV) drivers. In many cases, EVs continue to benefit from significant savings on the cost of fuel. Charging a medium-sized electric car at home at rates equivalent to the electricity price cap from 1 October equates to around half the cost of filling up an equivalent petrol vehicle. In addition, EVs generally cost less to maintain due to fewer moving parts than their petrol or diesel equivalents.
Asked by: Ian Levy (Conservative - Blyth Valley)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to support the 2030 phaseout of new internal combustion engine cars.
Answered by Nusrat Ghani - Minister of State (Minister for Europe)
The Government is investing £2.5 billion to incentivise the transition to zero emission vehicles with £1.6 billion of this funding to support charging infrastructure.
In addition, the up to £1 billion Automotive Transformation Fund supports R&D and capital investments across the electric vehicle supply chain to develop next generation of zero emission vehicle technologies in the UK.
The Government will introduce a zero-emission vehicle mandate requiring a percentage of manufacturers' new car and van sales to be zero emission each year from 2024 and continue to regulate tailpipe CO2 emissions of new non-zero emission cars and vans to limit their emissions until 100% of new sales are zero emission.
Asked by: Alexander Stafford (Conservative - Rother Valley)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to the Office for Budget Responsibility's publication entitled What does faster take-up of electric cars mean for tax receipts, published in March 2022, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of raising targets in the ZEV mandate to reflect the OBR's forecast for electric car sales.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
The government is fully supportive of the transition to electric vehicles. The government is analysing responses to the technical consultation on zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate policy design, and will bring forward the Government’s response, and a full regulatory proposal and cost benefit analysis, in due course.
Asked by: Baroness Randerson (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to estimates that new electric vehicle registrations for 2022 could reach 16 per cent, what plans they have, if any, to raise their target proposed in the Technical consultation on zero emission vehicle mandate policy design, published in April, that new electric vehicle sales should account for 22 per cent of total vehicle sales by 2024.
Answered by Baroness Vere of Norbiton - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The technical consultation on the design of the ZEV mandate, setting out initial ZEV target trajectories of 22% for cars, and 8% for vans, closed on 10 June. We are now analysing consultation responses, and will bring forward the Government’s response, and a full regulatory proposal, in due course
Asked by: Wera Hobhouse (Liberal Democrat - Bath)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to the news story entitled Plug-in grant for cars to end as focus moves to improving electric vehicle charging, published by his Department on 14 June 2022, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of removing electric car subsidies on the transition to electric vehicles.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
The Government’s approach to supporting the uptake of electric cars is clearly working – while the Government slowly reduced the grant over time, the sale of electric vehicles soared. The Plug-in Car Grant has had significant impacts on building the early electric car market, which is now maturing. The sales of fully electric cars grew from less than 1,000 in 2011 to almost 100,000 in the first 5 months of 2022 alone. Although still important, price is no longer the paramount barrier to adoption of electric cars.
An independent report commissioned by the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles to assess the impact of the grant scheme, found that the grant has had a material impact on demand for new electric cars, but also that the importance of it has reduced as the market has matured and price has become less of a barrier to vehicle uptake.