If you’re one of the thousands of drivers who have a new petrol or diesel car on order, don’t expect to have it in time for Christmas… or New Year’s Eve.
That’s because carmakers are holding back deliveries until January in the latest backdoor tactic to meet binding electric vehicle sales targets and avoid hefty fines, according to a boss at a major car retail chain.
Robert Forrester, chief executive of Vertu Motors, said dealers are being forced to delay customers receiving their new cars, which remain in “complexes” until January.
This is because car companies are desperate to avoid penalties for failing to register a 22 per cent quota of electric vehicles by 2024, which is the binding threshold set by the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Mandate introduced this year.
Failure to meet the 22 per cent target can result in fines of £15,000 per vehicle that does not meet the required threshold.
By restricting the availability of new gasoline and diesel cars until the new year, manufacturers are “rationing by the back door” in a bid to artificially inflate electric vehicle sales figures, Forrester said.
All I want for Christmas is my new car: Vertu Motors boss Robert Forrester says manufacturers are holding back delivery of petrol and diesel cars until January to meet electric vehicle sales targets for 2024.
The head of Vertu Motors, which oversees 202 dealerships representing major brands such as Honda, BMW and Kia across the country, told Auto Express: “We have petrol cars in compounds that have been sold to customers, but the keys are not They can deliver because the manufacturers, understandably, want to avoid fines later this year.
‘Christmas is approaching and there will be thousands of customers from different dealerships across the UK who will not be able to receive their cars because they will be delayed until January and the new ‘quota year’.
“They’re rationing through the back door.”
Forrester has already been highly critical of the ZEV mandate and the impact it is having on the new car market.
In September, he suggested that dealers had faced ‘a restriction on the supply of gasoline cars and hybrid cars,” despite the fact that these engines are the most in demand.
“It’s almost like we can’t supply the cars that people want, but we have a lot of cars that maybe they don’t want,” he said earlier this year, suggesting that showrooms were being forced to boost electric vehicle sales in the face of the limited appetite of consumers.
In his latest comments in an exclusive column written for Auto Express, he said the mandate “risks destroying the UK car industry forever”, revealing the latest in a long line of tactics deployed by car companies to achieve the government’s electric vehicle sales quotas.
It said its dealers lead the sector in electric car sales, but even their volumes “are still nowhere near the government’s arbitrary targets.”
The boss of Vertu Motors told Auto Express that new petrol cars are being stored in ‘compounds’ rather than delivered to customers as part of efforts to avoid year-end ZEV fines.
By restricting the availability of new gasoline and diesel cars until the new year, manufacturers are “rationing through the back door,” Forrester said.
The ZEV mandate introduced in January sets binding electric vehicle sales targets that will increase annually over the next decade. Automakers as a whole are on track to fall well short of the 22% quota required this year.
Passed into law under the Conservative government in January, the ZEV mandate requires that more than a fifth of vehicles sold by major manufacturers this year be zero-emissions, essentially battery electric vehicles.
The target increases annually, rising to 28 percent next year, a third by 2026, 80 percent in 2030, when the sale of new gasoline and diesel cars will be banned, and finally 100 percent in 2035, when they will also be banned. The sale of hybrid models is prohibited.
Car manufacturers that fail to meet the required thresholds could be forced to pay fines of £15,000 per vehicle that fails to meet the designated target.
The mandate operates on a credit-based system in which manufacturers are given or taken away credits if they perform above or below annual quotas.
Manufacturers can choose to save these credits for future years if they are needed or they can be sold to underperforming automakers that need them to avoid fines.
Conglomerates, such as the Volkswagen Group and Stellantis, can use credits from one brand under their umbrella to help another brand they own that is performing worse.
But manufacturers also get credits for sales of low-emission cars, such as plug-in hybrids.
If a car manufacturer exceeds its CO2 target (which is set individually for each brand) by reducing its CO2 emissions, then it can, for the first three years, convert this breathing room into ZEV credits at an exchange rate.
However, failure to meet annual sales percentage targets with credits each year will result in financial penalties of £15,000 per vehicle.
According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, electric vehicles accounted for 25.1 percent of all passenger car registrations in November.
This is likely due to manufacturers heavily cutting prices to make electric vehicles more attractive, but also withholding the availability of new petrol and diesel models to manipulate the numbers in their favour.
Looking to 2024 so far, the market share of electric vehicles is only 18.7 percent, more than three percentage points less than the binding 22 percent share of the ZEV mandate.
Just looking at December sales, it’s no surprise to learn that manufacturers are delaying deliveries of new gasoline and diesel models to inflate electric vehicle numbers.
Even though electric vehicles accounted for a quarter of all registrations in November, the EV market share for 2024 as a whole falls short of the threshold required by the ZEV mandate.
Earlier this year, Guy Pigounakis, commercial director at MG UK, told This is Money that the threat of “horrible fines” had led to “behavior from manufacturers not seen for 40 years”.
Lisa Brankin, president of Ford UK and Ireland, said last month that the ZEV mandate is “unworkable” and called on the government to introduce “substantial” subsidies to boost sales of electric vehicles.
Earlier this year, another motor industry executive highlighted the different strategies implemented by automakers to meet the demands of the ZEV mandate.
Guy Pigounakis, commercial director at MG UK, told This is Money that manufacturers are cutting prices and introducing their own subsidies for electric vehicles to make them more attractive to drivers.
They have also used the Motability scheme and dealer demonstrators to inflate EV sales figures, he told us.
Automakers have largely been critical of the mandate.
Last month, Vauxhall partly blamed the UK government’s electric vehicle sales targets when it announced the closure of its van factory in Luton next year, having previously threatened to pull some of its production from Britain due to the mandate. .
Ford bosses, who just announced job cuts in Europe, have said in recent weeks that the mandate is “unworkable.”
Nissan also told ministers at an emergency meeting that the ZEV mandate will cost jobs in Britain.
Following the session with automotive bosses, MP Louise Haigh agreed to hold an immediate consultation on relaxing the ZEV mandate rules.
However, a few days later she was forced to resign from her position as Minister of Transport after it emerged that she had pleaded guilty to fraud a decade ago.
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