To meet the United Kingdom’s and the European Union’s CO2 emissions targets for vehicles, manufacturers have significantly increased the production of electric cars. These now represent a substantial portion of new car sales, accounting for approximately one in every seven vehicles sold. However, the progress in electrifying vans lags far behind. Shockingly, only around one in sixty vans sold in the UK is electric.
Data obtained by Transport & Environment (T&E) forecasts that just a fifth of vans produced in Europe in 2030 will be electric. This falls dramatically short of the emissions phase-out goal the government has set, raising serious concerns about whether these targets will be met.
Greg Archer, UK Director at Transport & Environment, expressed his concern, stating, “While regulations and incentives aimed at encouraging the purchase of electric cars are succeeding in driving up sales, a staggering ninety-eight percent of new vans are still diesel-powered. If van manufacturers have their way, a substantial four-fifths of vans made and sold in Europe will still be diesels by 2030. The automotive industry appears to be pushing businesses to buy dirty diesel engines by restricting the availability of cleaner electric van models, engines that they can no longer sell in the passenger car market.”
With the rapid growth of e-commerce, new van sales in the UK surged by 43% between 2012 and 2019, and the emissions from these vehicles now constitute 17% of all CO2 emissions from the vehicle sector. New UK van standards, introduced at the beginning of 2021, were intended to reduce emissions, but current regulations allow vanmakers to meet the requirements without significantly increasing sales of lower-emission models. Furthermore, diesel car sales have plummeted to just one in ten of new car sales, contributing to a massive oversupply of diesel parts and engines.
T&E UK is urging the government to implement a zero-emissions sales target for van manufacturers. This would compel them to increase the sales of electric vans each year until they sell only zero-emission models by 2035. However, current regulations, introduced at the end of 2020, are too weak, and manufacturers can meet the targets without dramatically increasing sales of zero-emission models.
Greg Archer concluded, “Electric vans already make strong business sense due to their lower total costs of ownership. By 2026, the purchase price of an electric van is expected to be lower than that of its diesel equivalent. With the forthcoming Transport Decarbonisation Plan, the government must present clear strategies on how to achieve the phase-out of diesel vans by the end of 2030, including regulating automotive companies to increase sales of electric vans.”
The Department for Transport’s, long-delayed, Transport Decarbonisation Plan is anticipated to be supported by a Green Paper. This will outline how the government plans to meet its goals, including ending the sale of conventional gasoline and diesel cars and vans by 2030 and allowing only the sale of zero-emission vehicles by 2035.
