From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

This week’s disinformation from the ECIU propaganda unit!

Ahead of the Government’s Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate’s being debated in Parliamentary committee tomorrow, Colin Walker, Head of Transport at the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, said,

The Government’s impact assessment for the ZEV mandate clearly states that, once you subtract the policy’s costs from its economic benefits, the net benefit to the UK economy is £39bn [1], or around £1,400 per household.
That’s because the ZEV mandate will accelerate the UK’s uptake of EVs, and EVs are much cheaper to own and operate. Research by the ECIU has found that a Nissan Leaf, compared to a petrol equivalent, can save its owner over £1200 a year in fuel costs alone. [2]

To access these savings, most UK households will rely on the second-hand market – its where most of us buy our cars. And this is where the ZEV mandate will play a critical role – in driving up sales of new EVs, it will drive up the pace at which EVs arrive on the second hand market. Without it, the UK’s drivers will be stuck driving slower and more expensive petrol cars for longer”.

https://eciu.net/media/press-releases/2023/comment-zero-emissions-vehicle-mandate-will-be-a-net-benefit-to-uk-economy-government-data-shows

WOW!! The ZEV mandate must be wonderful to save us all £1400 each!

But as with all con-merchants, it pays to check the small print first.

Firstly, the Government Impact Assessment they quote covers the period 2024  to 2071! So that £1400 actually works out at just £30 a year. The amount is so tiny in overall terms that statistically it is meaningless.

But if we burrow deeper into the Impact Assessment we find that it is based on a set of very dodgy assumptions.

First off, the supposed benefits include £103bn in “emissions savings” :

But nobody will be any better off economically just because we cut CO2 emissions. It is just a made up number to make the benefits look substantial.

Secondly the assessment uses unrealistically low price assumptions for EVs:

To claim that an EV will only cost £3100 more in 2025 simply does not reflect the current reality, which tells us that the price differential is at least £10000, even for small cars.

I certainly don’t know what they might cost in ten or twenty years time, but neither does the Government or ECIU. But it is dishonest to pretend that people won’t be much worse off in the foreseeable future if they are forced to buy EVs.

We then come on to the second claim:

The link they give is wrong, as it takes us back to the Impact Assessment.

However their costs for petrol include fuel duty and VAT – the typical annual fuel bill including these taxes would be around £1400 for a small petrol engined car.

Take the taxes away, which is the true comparison, and fuels costs would drop to about £800. The saving with an EV would at best about £200, which plainly would not compensate for the higher purchase price.

But that saving would only apply to motorists with off street parking, and who never use public charging.

According to the RAC, anybody using a public charger the cost/mile would be double that of petrol, with fuel duty excluded.

https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/charging/electric-car-public-charging-costs-rac-charge-watch/

Finally, the ECIU make a big claim about second hand EVs, which supposedly UK drivers are desperate to get their hands on:

Buyers of second hand cars tend to be relatively poor. And poorer people are less likely to have off street parking. So it is the less well off who will be hardest hit by the ZEV mandate, which will perforce lead to many fewer ICEs appearing in the second hand market in a few years time.