𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Petrol and diesel lorries could be banned under government plans. Traditional fuel-powered trucks will not be able to be sold, ministers have announced, also ruling out allowing the use of low-carbon or synthetic fuels. This means they will have to be electric from 2040. 

Those against the move warn that Labour’s plan would increase the cost of doing business, as well as consumer goods and parcel deliveries as haulage companies would have to transition to battery or hydrogen-powered lorries. Kemi Badenoch said in December that the Conservatives will abandon plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 if they win the next election.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the Tory leader described electric vehicle quotas as “economic self-harm”.

“The only winners in this economy are China, who have happily profited from our decision to accelerate demand for electric vehicles without first securing our own battery and mineral supply chains,” she said.

The 2040 cut-off date for petrol trucks was put forward first by the Conservatives in November 2021, The Mail reports.

The Department for Transport (DfT) has now set forward three options for enforcing it.

Manufacturers would be set annual quotas for the number of electric trucks they sell, the first dictates.

Alternatively, transport firms could be set carbon emissions caps.

Finally, companies could be made to make sure that an increasing proportion of their fleet was electric, until it reached 100%.

“Labour are sleepwalking into a cost shock for the entire economy,” Conservative shadow transport secretary Richard Holden told The Telegraph.

“Forcing haulage firms to scrap perfectly good lorries while they can still run for years and replace them with other vehicles before either the technology or infrastructure is ready will simply drive up costs, as well as being environmentally disastrous.

“Those costs will be passed straight through supply chains into higher prices in shops, higher construction costs, and more pressure on inflation.”

It comes after Sir Keir Starmer, Ed Miliband and other members of the Cabinet were pummeled by more than 30,000 emails as angry motorists call on him to scrap his date from which petrol and diesel cars will be banned.

In April, the Prime Minister confirmed an end to the sale of fossil-fuelled vehicles in 2030.

Hybrid cars, however, can be flogged until 2035, and smaller car manufacturers avoid the rules completely.

But campaigners want to see Britain’s deadline brought in line with the European Union’s 2040 cut-off date as they are “worried sick about the high cost of driving and the undemocratic imposition”.