The UK should soften its interim 2030 target for electric vehicle sales to support investment in domestic auto and battery manufacturing capacities, a new report is expected to recommend later this week.
The UK’s Policy Commission on Gigafactories will say in a Wednesday report that the UK needs to recalibrate the interim EV goals to 2030, Lord John Hutton, who launched the commission last year, told the Financial Times.
The Commission, launched in the middle of 2025, aimed to produce recommendations on how the UK can scale up its battery manufacturing capacity – a critical requirement to achieving net zero, generating economic growth, and securing high-quality green jobs.
Currently, the UK’s zero emission vehicle mandate is 80% of new cars sold in 2030 to be electric vehicles. This share should rise to 100% by 2035.
The UK doesn’t plan to revisit the 2035 end-date for sale of new gasoline and diesel passenger cars.
But the Policy Commission on Gigafactories will recommend that the government ease the 2030 interim target to 50-60% from 80% and reduce fines for carmakers in case of non-compliance. This, the commission reckons, will encourage investment in the UK’s battery supply chain.
“There is growing consensus in industry that there’s a need for a course redirection here. It’s not scrap everything, but recalibrate,” Lord Hutton, a former Labour Defence Secretary, told FT.
“Regulatory interventions have to be evidence based, not ideologically based,” Lord Hutton added.
Auto makers in the UK and Europe have been suffering in recent years from the U.S. tariffs, the Chinese curbs on rare earth exports, falling demand, and competition from the cheaper vehicles made in China.
At the end of last year, intense lobbying from Germany and Italy, and the auto industry, resulted in the European Commission proposing the easing of the de facto EU ban on new sales of combustion-engine cars from 2035.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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