what the heck is going on??

[simonineaston]

first sunak gives a firm nod to ice users by freezing fuel duty and now they chop even more off the 'leccy car subsidy, meaning its dropped from £4500 in 2011, to the current 2,500, with a reduced cap, too. Considering this lot spend millions consulting on message and spin, they will know exactly how damaging this will be. Even the car industry itself - not exactly noted in the past as yoghurt-knitting tree huggers - is complaining vigorously! What is the matter with these people??

[kwackers]

Why the surprise?
This government is a master class in saying one thing and doing something completely different.
It turns out that most people think if they hear them say they're going to do something then that thing will have happened.

TBH I don't think it'll make that much difference. I rather suspect the car industry could absorb the price if they want to, I reckon the price is set by what people are currently prepared to pay.
But there may also be other factors at work here. We don't really have any EV manufacturing worth talking about, we have an IC car industry on its knees and perhaps we don't really want a rush to EV's just yet.

Cheap EV's are definitely a possible, watch this.

[youtube]DmLDK2fKQRM[/youtube]

[thirdcrank]

Perhaps there are more votes at stake over the pump price of petrol/ diesel than in the showroom price of electric cars, especially if you bear in mind the relatively small number of new cars said to be bought outright. I fancy that with things like PCP (personal contract purchase) AKA the latest form of the never-never, the cost of the financial charges is more significant in the monthly payment than government incentives. And I think it's the monthly payment that affects most car sales.

[mjr]

Cheap EV's are definitely a possible, watch this.

]

All you have to do is walk home carrying it!

[thirdcrank]

On checking, I was surprised to see that the policy of annually increasing fuel duties to deter the growth of road traffic dates back to Norman Lamont (1993) and the last rise under the original policy was under New Labour in 1999. Under one heading or another, for the last couple of decades, Chancellors have ducked out of imposing it.

I suspect that in terms of spin, scrapping the policy would be much more damaging than finding reasons each year to ignore it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_Pric ... 0locations.

[kwackers]

All you have to do is walk home carrying it!

It's obviously a joke but I'm missing something, why would you carry it?

[Jdsk]

Utterly depressing. This is a difficult migration and it would be enormously helped by consistency in national policy.

See also green manufacturing and not mining coal.

Jonathan

[Jdsk]

This government is a master class in saying one thing and doing something completely different.

Are you following science policy and funding of research?

: - (

Jonathan

[mjr]

All you have to do is walk home carrying it!

It's obviously a joke but I'm missing something, why would you carry it?

Not enough range to drive between available charging points on his Kabul route.

[kwackers]

All you have to do is walk home carrying it!

It's obviously a joke but I'm missing something, why would you carry it?

Not enough range to drive between available charging points on his Kabul route.

It's sunny, he just needs some solar panels (probably safer to drive at night anyway...)

[Psamathe]

So when we [UK] host COP26 and try and persuade all the other countries to take difficult steps to lower emissions all they have to say is "OK, we'll cut money for renewables and increase funding for carbon fuels - as per UK's example".

Ian

[Mike Sales]

I wonder if the climate change deniers in the Tory Party still cling to their beliefs, but nowadays keep quiet.

[Stevek76]

Seem to be a lot of competing internal political forces pulling in different directions, all against a background of a treasury trying to repeat austerity mistakes seems to be causing some very mixed decisions.

Fuel duty is always a political issue ('tax on the hardworking!!!! etc), though I'd have thought from a political perspective you might as well get fuel increases in line with inflation going again and standardised early in the term, rather than later.

As far as EVs go, an unwind of subsidies is inevitable as they become more popular anyway. I can't see the problem with that really. Being a car they are still subsidised to a ridiculously high degree anyway after the various costs they externalise onto society are accounted for. EVs aren't exactly green, they're just less ungreen than ICE cars.

The mixed bag extends throughout the rest of transport though. Ox-Cam expressway just got binned off but Gov still committed to £27bn on trunk roads over the next 5 years, and East-west rail is still being built non-electrified (and without scope to easily electrify later). They are supposedly supportive of HS2 but appear to be doing their best to severely limit potential through the descoping of Euston so developers can have a bit more cash and uncertainty over the eastern leg. Wider rail electrification plans remain non-existent and while the policy announcements on buses and cycling are a vast improvement over previous governments, the funding is still paltry.

[Jdsk]

Ox-Cam expressway just got binned off...

Would have been in our valley! But I hadn't heard that before you posted. : - )

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/oxford-to-cambridge-expressway-project-cancelled-as-transport-secretary-looks-to-alternative-plans-for-improving-transport-in-the-region

Jonathan

[kwackers]

I wonder if the climate change deniers in the Tory Party still cling to their beliefs, but nowadays keep quiet.

Find a thread on social media about EV's and you'll find them out in force (climate deniers, not necessarily Tories).

There are huge amounts of disinformation out there on both fronts as well as complete ignorance about the problems with IC cars
And to some extent that's the annoying bit. I've no problem with folk pulling one thing apart (untruths excepted) but when they assume the other thing is somehow 'golden' then at that point I despair.