Obviously... Since the original announcement for the ban, they would have been planning for that... only for the wank stain of a government to do a uturn and delay it. I bet Ford have pissed a load of money up the wall trying to get inline with the timelines only for them to be slackened.
The statement is nothing but a dead cat to deflect from the heat pump scam that is coming. The UK has no buying power, so cannot dictate standards anymore. They can control standards within their own market, but for international products like cars they have very little say. The EU will be the ones to decide this one. If the EU pulls the plugs on petrol engines in 2030, then no one will build petrol engine for the European market. Building for just the UK will become very expensive.
This is aside from the fact that the Tories have very little time left in office. The Express posted this. Being a Tory mouthpiece, the Express sees this as something to whip Labour with. It is just a clown show.
I've been considering a heat pump for a while, could you provide more information about this scam? I've tried googling around, but a lot of the articles are light on details, and the video suggestions seem... disreputable to be polite.
If you've got articles to explain the issue to hand, that'd be helpful, but even a light explanation as to why they're bad or not up to the task would be helpful
Being the first to introduce the ban by 5 years has driven a lot of zero carbon transport investment to the UK. If it changes to the same as the EU, then why not set up there. Can totally understand why Ford UK is pissed, it wont be around much longer now as Ford focus investment in Germany.
Is this gonna be like when oil companies were saying they should be regulated, knowing full well the government isn't going to do anything about their record profits? Like, the government is saving face for businesses and they're taking an opportunity for free PR.
"No! Don't do that! Don't let us make so much profit!"
No, I think this is genuine (from the perspective of self-motivation). Designing and building vehicles is a long and expensive process, and up until now companies like Ford have been told that they don't need any ICE vehicles for sale in the UK market for 2030. Now they're told that they can either hurriedly reverse course and spin up new ICE vehicle lines for that period, or they can lose out to those companies (like, say, Toyota) who have not managed to make as much progress on the BEV lines and are still likely to have an oversupply of ICEVs.
What they want more than anything else is to know the rules of the game that they're expected to be playing. Being told at what is, in corporate terms, basically the last minute that the rules have changed is going to be very frustrating.
And it's not like they can even start making plans based on the new deadline. Why plan for 2035 when there's a possibility that the Tories will get booted out at the next general election, and the incoming Labour government may move it back to 2030 (you know, assuming Starmer doesn't go along with Sunak's U-turn out of fear of losing votes).
This is the real problem with the UK's stagnating economy and low productivity: it is impossible for businesses to make any plans for the future (which is necessary to commit to investment) when an unstable and incompetent government insists on changing the goalposts every couple of years.
The hard part is the supply chain. It doesn't cost Ford money to keep an old ICE assembly line going. However they need to tell their suppliers years in advance how much material they will be buying. Those suppliers then use those plans to buy land for mines, buy equipment for the mines, build ore processing plants - all of this financed at good rates because the bank sees they have a contract to deliver.
I'm not an insider at Ford, but I'm confident they have agreements with suppliers to deliver the materials for the electric cars they expect to sell in 2030. They have to because the world today cannot build enough batteries for what they need. If Ford decides to sell 0 electric cars in 2030, they are still under contract to buy enough batteries for most of their cars and trucks to be electric - which is then batteries they will dump for whatever they can sell them for. (I don't know what most is - they likely have complex contracts and probably have not secured supply for everything they need yet)
I've long though ice sales should be limited to 2% of all sales. That gives an easy out for any niches where ICE actually is compellingly better, but still forces everything else to switch. (travel to the north pole for example)
Not likely. Well in 2031 the rich might buy them, but by 2040 it will be obvious to the rich that regular gas stations are going out of business. 2% of all cars is not enough to support a nationwide gas station network, so the rich will buy expensive electric cars to ensure they can drive. By 2040 the only people buying gas/diesel cars are doing something that cannot be done with an electric car - trips to the north pole is the only example i can think of - but the beauty of saying 2% can be ICE means if there is something I can't think of it can still be covered in that 2%. 2% is also small enough to ensure gas/diesel will become hard to find and so people who resist will still switch to something else.
Gas will still be available, but it will be something collectors buy, and those cars are not driven daily. We know how to make renewable gas and diesel. It costs 4-5x as much $ vs a simple oil well, but it is also a better fuel (it is synthetic molecules so engineers can choose the properties) so those left using petrol will probably prefer it.
Of fucking course they are pissed. Governments are having them dump money into solutions that are expensive and a shitty solution for most people. Then they move the bar because, oh look it turns out the materials are near impossible to get enough of and most customers don't have the infrastructure to charge yet. But yeah I'm sure pussyfooting around converting gas stations to electric is going to solve the issue 🤦♂️.
People are not thinking this through. Most of the emissions is coming from India and China for cars, and they are not able to switch to electric.
It would be better to get people to work from home. Mandate that a job that can be done from home is done from home. That would be an instant climate boon.
Thats like me asking my kids to clean their bedrooms up, and one of them turning around and saying no because the other hasn't cleaned their room up. FFS if we all did this, then the world is fucked.
US and Europe are very significant on the world stage as well. China is already making a push to electric cars. India will switch to electric as well if the rest of the world does just because it will be so much easier to follow.