UK weighs weakening EV targets despite record sales
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- UK government is weighing a consultation 'as soon as next week' to revisit its 2030 EV rules, according to The Times, with reporting suggesting the 80% EV sales target could be watered down to 50-70%.
- UK EV sales are already outperforming benchmarks: end-of-2025 sales met 2026 targets, BEV sales rose 44.5% year-over-year in July, and plug-in vehicles accounted for nearly 40% of new car sales year-to-date.
- Andy Burnham's Labour government moved Ed Miliband from environment secretary to Foreign Secretary and elevated Miatta Fahnbulleh to the environment post, with Fahnbulleh hinting at a rules review the article links to pro-pollution lobbying.
- UK petrol prices average £1.62/liter ($8.21/gallon) and diesel has reached £1.92/L ($9.70/gal), driven by a five-month war in Iran that has kept global oil prices elevated.
- England is enduring its hottest summer on record with a fifth heat wave looming, drought covering three-fourths of the country, and thousands already dead from earlier heat waves this year.
- UK households responded to the oil shock with sharp increases in solar systems, EV chargers, and heat pumps since March, and the article notes electric cars now have a lower upfront price than petrol cars thanks to the UK's lack of tariffs on Chinese EVs.
Why it matters: Weakening EV targets now would reverse the UK's most successful climate policy at the precise moment EVs are winning on every measurable front — record sales, energy security from Strait of Hormuz exposure, lower upfront costs, and a climate emergency that has already turned three-fourths of England into drought. British consumers and climate-vulnerable populations absorb the cost while auto industry lobbyists capture the policy outcome.
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