top of page
Search
"Fuelcard Frank"

BLOG 33 - Do we now live in a dictatorship? 


I picked up on a couple of headlines today on a commercial online magazine, Fleet News.  They stated the following: Fleets face EV quotas when ordering ICE vehicles.


Fleets are being told they need to order a percentage of battery electric vehicles when placing bulk orders for petrol or diesel vehicles.  Large Fleet operators are commanded to buy 22% of their vehicles as EV’s whether they fit the purpose or not!


Lorna McAtear, head of fleet at the National Grid, said that that some manufacturers were insisting she could “only buy ICE vans, if 10% of the order was fully electric”.  However, she said: “When it comes to vans, these have got to be operationally efficient vehicles.”


The Association of Fleet Professionals Chairman, Paul Hollick explained: “The problem is that some fleets just don’t have a role for these electric vans within their business. Their payload and range requirements mean there is no operational profile for which the electric van can be practically used, or there is no suitable charging infrastructure.



The second Headline was:

Ford warns of petrol and diesel price rises to hit ZEV target.


Ford has warned it may restrict sales of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles in the UK to hit Government battery electric vehicle (BEV) targets, forcing a hike in prices.  The zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate, which came into force this year, requires more than a fifth (22%) of cars and 10% of vans sold by manufacturers to be fully electric.  The targets for manufacturers increase each year, requiring 80% of new cars and 70% of new vans sold in Great Britain to be zero emission by 2030, increasing to 100% by 2035. 


However, Martin Sander, head of Ford’s European electric vehicles (EV) division, told the Financial Times Future of the Car summit that ZEV targets could force it to sell fewer ICE vehicles in the UK in order to increase its proportion of BEV sales. 


It’s really important for politicians to monitor what is going on and that the ZEV targets, this year, next year, going forward, are roughly in line with consumer demand,” he said. “This is what we need. You cannot push vehicles into the market against demand.”  He stressed that Ford was “not going to pay penalties”.


So the Government can't make EV's attractive enough for us to willingly buy them, so they are forcing Business Fleets to buy these overpriced underperforming vehicles to make up their quotas!  This is just a dictatorship on vehicles by a polite name. 


If you want some real facts about EV vans look at some of my Blogs at www.fuelcardcentre.co.uk/blogs  to learn how the premium you pay for an EV van or truck is never made up by so called lower running costs, in fact, nowhere near! 


Maybe large Fleets should simply stop buying new vans for a year and see how the Government reacts to the pressure from the motor industry then!  It's similar for EV vs ICE cars as well.


By

FUELCARD FRANK

4 views0 comments

留言


bottom of page