This week, the UK Prime Minister has confirmed the news that general sale of brand new petrol and diesel cars and vans will now be banned from the year 2030, which has been brought forward from the 2040 goal it was previously.

One thing to remember is that the sale of hybrids will be allowed for a little longer after 2030, which will be extended until 2035. This whole campaign is to make sure that the UK becomes carbon neutral by 2050.

Hybrids will be allowed as long as they can cover a “significant distance” on battery power alone. Although the definition of what is considered a significant distance, but the hybrids will only be on sale until 2035.

So what happens after 2035?

So after 2035 the only cars that are allowed to be sold will be pure electric or BEV (battery electric vehicles) such as the Nissan Leaf, Tesla Model 3, VW ID.3 as well as the whole line up of BEV vehicles. Interestingly, hydrogen powered cars such as the Toyota Mira are included in this – however there isn’t a massive amount of infrastructure at this time, although this could change but pure electric seems to be the direction it is going in at this stage.

Something to remember is this is a band on new car sales, so second hand cars is still allowed beyond 2030, for now at least.

Government funding

The big question is charging and the government are helping with this, £1.3 billion is going be invested into rolling out new infrastructure for charging boxes for homes as well as on streets and at motorway services across the country. The Government is also putting another £1.5 billion elsewhere.

£582 million is being invested into grants to help people purchase new PHEVs and EV vehicles, £500 million is being invested to help the development of batteries and another £525 million is being reserved for nuclear power plants, which the government says will be used to help meet the demand from EVs.

“Although this year has taken a very different path to the one we expected, I haven’t lost sight of our ambitious plans to level up across the country. My Ten Point Plan will create, support and protect hundreds of thousands of green jobs, whilst making strides towards net zero by 2050. Our green industrial revolution will be powered by the wind turbines of Scotland and the North East, propelled by the electric vehicles made in the Midlands and advanced by the latest technologies developed in Wales, so we can look ahead to a more prosperous, greener future.”

Boris Johnson – UK Prime Minister

The original decision to have a date in mind for the ban of internal combustion cars was originally decided back in 2017 by Micheal Gove with a date of 2040.