Dealership warns of falling ICE supply
A leading UK dealership has warned that there could be a shortage of new petrol and diesel vehicles entering the market as vehicle manufacturers strive to meet the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Mandate.
The Mandate stipulates that 22% of all new cars sold this year must be electric and 10% of vans, with penalties of £15,000 for every vehicle sold that falls below this target. EV sales must then increase every year until all new sales are electric by 2035.
However, with EV car sales to private buyers slowing down, there is a growing fear that manufacturers will limit the number of petrol and diesel vehicles entering the market to boost EV percentages.
Robert Forrester, chief executive at Vertu Motors, said: “The issue you’ve got is fleet demand for battery electric vehicles is very strong due to tax incentives, but retail demand is weak. So if you can’t grow the battery electric vehicles to hit the percentage, the logical thing to do is to reduce the petrol and diesel supply. If you choke off petrol and diesel supply, then clearly I think prices probably will go up and actually used car prices definitely will go up.
“But also, we could get to the situation where somebody walks through the door wanting to buy a petrol car and we might not be able to supply one.”
