Britain delays ban on new petrol and diesel cars to 2035, prime minister confirms

Like it or not, Sunak the UK Prime Minister has finally seen sense on the untimed and ridiculous idea of banning the sale of new diesel or petrol powered cars by 2030.

How anyone was ever convnced that the UK was in line to meet the 2030 target is beyond us. 

The plan to help reduce our emissions might well have been admirable but had never been thought through. thoroughly - if the original 2030 was adhered to the UK would have been plunged into an electricity crisis. Quite simply the UK does not generate enough electricity to power all the required charging points that would have need to be installed!

At the end of August 2023, there were 48,450 electric vehicle charging points across the UK, across 29,062 charging locations. This represents a 42% increase in the total number of charging devices since August 2022.With a target of 300,000 publicly available charge points by 2030 and just 48,450 installations in place, more focus was/is  needed to accelerate the nation's charging infrastructure. To reach the target we would require an increase in monthly installations of charging points of 288%!

Costs of running electric cars have also been ignoried. Electric car drivers who want to charge their vehicles en-route are already paying 58% more than they were in May, a recent market review by the RAC revealed.

The average cost to use a 'rapid' device across the different public charging operators in the UK at the start of January has risen to 70.32p per kilowatt hour, up from 44.55p eight months ago.

It says the owner of an electric family car with a 64kW battery will pay £36 to add around 188 miles of range, which works out at almost 20p per mile. In contrast, a driver of an equivalent petrol car will pay only around 17p-a-mile.