The Government is set to publish its updated net-zero strategy, and it is expected that as part of the Green Day announcements, the Government will publish the draft regulations to implement the ZEV mandate, for final consultation before they are made law later this year.

The ZEV mandate will set sales targets for manufacturers from 2024 to 2035, which paves the way for all new car and vans sales to be zero emission by 2035. This is the most ambitious phase-out pathway of any major economy and avoids the risk of a bad compromise; as has happened in the EU.

T&E has predicted that the mandate will set zero-emissions car targets of 22 per cent in 2024 and 80 per cent in 2030, and an uplift of previously proposed targets for vans.

However, the Government is likely to include loopholes for laggard manufacturers to meet targets, such as the ability to bank and borrow credits. This will mean manufacturers would be able to do less in the early years of the mandate if they promise to do more later. It’s important that these flexibilities are time-limited and require manufacturers to overcompensate in the following years. This could help smaller, specialist manufactures such as Aston Martin.

Richard Hebditch, director of T&E UK said: “The Government’s new measures will deliver a clean car Britain. The ZEV mandate sets a clear path for a petrol and diesel phase-out in 2030, providing much-needed certainty for consumers and manufacturers. But the Government can do more. Its short-term targets need to push carmakers to ramp up supply, not follow where the market already is on EVs. The question is no longer whether the internal combustion engine’s days are numbered, but how fast we get there.”

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