The UK plans to ban the sale of new cars with combustion engines from 2030. What consequences for the market of new cars?
- The UK plans to ban the sale of new cars with combustion engine as early as 2030, five years ahead of the previously deadline announced. This ban would apply to gasoline and diesel cars, followed by hybrids and plug-in hybrids five years later, in 2035.
- The UK car market over ten months 2020 is made up as follows: 1,384,601 cars including 100,160 HEV, 75,325 BEV and 44,046 PHEV representing a proportion of 16% xEVsand 84% petrol and diesel engines (1,165 070 units). British car production, which reached 780,000 cars in 10 months of 2020, produced only 125,000 hybrid and electric cars, accounting for 16% of all car production in the country. We can see that the proportion of cars with thermal engines is largely the majority in the country and that it will not be easy to replace all these cars with electric cars in ten or fifteen years, in terms of sales or production.
- The British car park is currently composed of 31.8 million cars of which 18.8 million run on gasoline and 12.3 million on diesel. The remains (685,000 units) is made up of hybrid (515,000 units), plug-in hybrids (80,000 units) and electric (90,000 units) cars.
- The United Kingdom has announced a change to this calendar, going from 2035 to 2030, after announcing last February that it was going from 2040 to 2035. So in 9 months, the calendar has accelerated by 5 years….and consequently raises doubts about the reliability of this calendar.
- Nevertheless, if this schedule is confirmed, there is a strong risk that the market will fall very sharply for at least 3-4 years after 2030. Indeed, if the ban on sales of combustion vehicles is applied but that at the same time, owners of thermal cars will be able to continue to circulate, it can be expected that buyers (professionals or individuals) will anticipate purchases of thermal vehicles before 2030 or delay the replacement of their existing vehicles to a period beyond of 2030. This could be even more true if the conditions for a real growth of the BEV market are not met by 2030 (numerous recharging infrastructure + purchase price of electric vehicles equivalent to thermal vehicles).
- Are we going to a sharp decline of the UK market in 2030? The example of the Norwegian market (end of sales of thermal vehicles in 2025) will be interesting to analyse, even though the Norwegian market is already today at 50% in BEV and 70% in BEV + PHEV.
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