Blogs from the Blackstuff
Blogs from the Blackstuff
Professor John Clancy and Professor David Bailey
Blogs from the Blackstuff
Blogs from the Blackstuff
Blogs from the Blackstuff
By Professor David Bailey
6th October 2026
And Fix the EV Transition Properly.
Richard Parker is right.
The West Midlands Mayor today called on the government to relax its electric vehicle targets, arguing that the current timetable risks placing an unacceptable burden on an automotive industry that is central to the region’s economy. He is speaking for a region where the transition to electric vehicles is not an abstract policy debate but a question of factories, supply chains, investment and people’s jobs.
We’ve been banging on about it here at Blogs from the Blackstuff for months. And with the government now reviewing the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate, ministers should listen.
This is NOT an argument against electric vehicles. Quite the opposite. The UK is going electric and the direction of travel is clear. The question is whether government policy is sufficiently realistic to make that transition commercially and politically sustainable. At the moment, it isn’t.
The ZEV mandate requires an increasing proportion of manufacturers’ new car sales to be zero-emission vehicles, rising from 33 per cent in 2026 to 38 per cent in 2027, 52 per cent in 2028, 66 per cent in 2029 and 80 per cent in 2030. The problem is that demand isn’t keeping pace with the targets.
September produced a record month for battery-electric vehicle sales, with almost 100,000 EVs registered. EVs accounted for 28.3 per cent of September registrations and were up more than 36 per cent on a year earlier. Great. That’s real progress. But even after this record month, EVs accounted for only 26.2 per cent of registrations across the first nine months of 2026, compared with a 33 per cent mandate target. That gap tells us something pretty important.
The issue isn’t that people don’t want electric cars. Increasing numbers clearly do. The issue is that government has set a regulatory trajectory which is running way ahead of the underlying market. And you can’t legislate demand into existence.
Manufacturers are already responding by offering discounts, subsidising finance and putting huge resources into pushing EVs into the market. The result is impressive sales growth, but this does not make a sustainable market. All this matters enormously in the West Midlands.
The region still has one of Europe’s most important automotive clusters. We forget that at our peril. JLR, its suppliers and the wider ecosystem support thousands of highly skilled jobs. The transition to electric vehicles creates enormous opportunities, but it also creates enormous risks if investment decisions are made against a policy framework that companies don’t believe reflects market reality.
Richard Parker is therefore right to say that government needs to think about the industrial consequences of the mandate. This is not about helping people who want to keep driving petrol cars. It is about whether Britain retains the capacity to design, manufacture and export cars in the future.
There is a danger that an excessively rigid ZEV mandate actually undermines the very industrial transition it is supposed to accelerate. If manufacturers are forced to chase sales that consumers are not yet ready to make, profitability suffers. If profitability suffers, investment becomes harder. And if investment is weakened, the UK becomes a less attractive place to build the next generation of vehicles. That is precisely the wrong outcome.
The government does deserve credit for recognising the problem. I’m impressed with Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds who genuinely does seem to listen. He inherited a dogs’ breakfast of a policy. The current consultation explicitly asks whether the existing ZEV trajectory remains appropriate and is considering different ways of modifying the pathway while maintaining the longer-term transition.
The government should now be bold enough to act on the evidence. That means relaxing the near-term ZEV targets. But relaxing the targets should not mean abandoning the transition.
Instead, it should mean using the breathing space to fix the things that are really holding the transition back. Again this is something I have banged on about for some time, having driven EVs since 2014 (yes I was a crazy early-adopter).
Firstly, charging infrastructure needs to become dramatically better outside of London and the South East. For people with driveways and home charging, an EV can make enormous economic sense. For people living in flats, terraces or areas without convenient parking, the calculation can be very different. Public charging needs to be reliable, easy to use and transparent on price. It should not require consumers to navigate a maze of apps, opaque payment systems and tariffs.
Secondly, the used-EV market needs to mature. Mass adoption will not come from selling expensive new cars. It will come when ordinary households can buy good-quality used EVs at affordable prices and have confidence in battery life, residual values and running costs.
Thirdly, government needs to address the wider economics of motoring. Insurance costs, electricity prices, taxation and charging costs all influence whether consumers make the switch. Telling people to buy an EV while allowing the overall cost proposition to remain uncertain is hardly a coherent transition strategy. VAT on public charging for example needs to come down so that those who can’t access home electricity tariffs aren’t penalised
And fourthly, Britain needs to think much harder about industrial competitiveness.
If we are serious about reindustrialising Britain, or even avoiding further deindustrialisation, we can’t simultaneously impose one of the world’s most demanding EV sales mandates while leaving British manufacturers facing hugely high energy costs, trade uncertainty and intense competition from heavily subsidised Chinese producers.
That is particularly important now. Chinese manufacturers are rapidly expanding their presence in the UK. The September market showed just how quickly this is happening, with Chinese brands taking a growing share of the market.
There is an obvious irony here.
A policy designed to accelerate Britain’s transition to electric vehicles could end up accelerating the market for electric vehicles made elsewhere unless we get the industrial strategy right. That is deindustrialisation with a green badge.
The answer isn’t to slow down electrification. It is to make sure Britain can benefit from it.
That means supporting domestic production, supply chains, skills and investment while ensuring that the transition happens at a pace consumers can actually sustain.
The government has repeatedly said that it remains committed to ending the sale of new pure petrol and diesel cars by 2030 and achieving zero-emission new car and van sales by 2035.
But there is a distinction between having a long-term destination and insisting on hitting every intermediate milestone regardless of what happens in the market. We need the former, not the latter.
The ZEV mandate should therefore be relaxed, to 50% by 2030, with a more gradual glide path to 2035. The government should make clear that this is not a retreat from electrification. It is a recalibration designed to make electrification work.
The key lesson is simple. The ZEV mandate has succeeded in pushing manufacturers to invest. It has helped transform the range of EVs available to consumers. It has helped move the market.
But policy has now moved faster than demand. The sensible response is not to slam on the brakes. Nor is it to keep accelerating towards a cliff edge. It is to change gear.
Richard Parker’s intervention is important because it brings the debate back to where it should always have been: the real economy. The West Midlands cannot afford an EV transition that looks impressive on a department for Transport spreadsheet but damages the manufacturing base on which the region’s prosperity depends.
Britain needs an EV transition that consumers can afford, manufacturers can make money from and regions can build their industrial futures around. That requires more flexibility now, not less ambition for the long term.
We need to use the next few years to build the charging network, develop the used-EV market, bring down costs, strengthen British supply chains and build consumer confidence. Then let the market take off.
The EV future is coming. We don’t need to force it so hard that we risk breaking the industry that has to deliver it. The government’s ZEV review is therefore an opportunity to help the auto industry and the region. Don’t waste it.
Professor David Bailey works at the Birmingham Business School.
Professor David Bailey works at the Birmingham Business School and is a Senior Fellow at the UK in a Changing Europe programme.
Print version here
John Clancy and David Bailey
Richard Parker is right.
The West Midlands Mayor today called on the government to relax its electric vehicle targets, arguing that the current timetable risks placing an unacceptable burden on an automotive industry that is central to the region’s economy. He is speaking for a region where the transition to electric vehicles is not an abstract policy debate but a question of factories, supply chains, investment and people’s jobs.
We’ve been banging on about it here at Blogs from the Blackstuff for months. And with the government now reviewing the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate, ministers should listen.
This is NOT an argument against electric vehicles. Quite the opposite. The UK is going electric and the direction of travel is clear. The question is whether government policy is sufficiently realistic to make that transition commercially and politically sustainable. At the moment, it isn’t.
The ZEV mandate requires an increasing proportion of manufacturers’ new car sales to be zero-emission vehicles, rising from 33 per cent in 2026 to 38 per cent in 2027, 52 per cent in 2028, 66 per cent in 2029 and 80 per cent in 2030. The problem is that demand isn’t keeping pace with the targets.
September produced a record month for battery-electric vehicle sales, with almost 100,000 EVs registered. EVs accounted for 28.3 per cent of September registrations and were up more than 36 per cent on a year earlier. Great. That’s real progress. But even after this record month, EVs accounted for only 26.2 per cent of registrations across the first nine months of 2026, compared with a 33 per cent mandate target. That gap tells us something pretty important.
The issue isn’t that people don’t want electric cars. Increasing numbers clearly do. The issue is that government has set a regulatory trajectory which is running way ahead of the underlying market. And you can’t legislate demand into existence.
Manufacturers are already responding by offering discounts, subsidising finance and putting huge resources into pushing EVs into the market. The result is impressive sales growth, but this does not make a sustainable market. All this matters enormously in the West Midlands.
The region still has one of Europe’s most important automotive clusters. We forget that at our peril. JLR, its suppliers and the wider ecosystem support thousands of highly skilled jobs. The transition to electric vehicles creates enormous opportunities, but it also creates enormous risks if investment decisions are made against a policy framework that companies don’t believe reflects market reality.
Richard Parker is therefore right to say that government needs to think about the industrial consequences of the mandate. This is not about helping people who want to keep driving petrol cars. It is about whether Britain retains the capacity to design, manufacture and export cars in the future.
There is a danger that an excessively rigid ZEV mandate actually undermines the very industrial transition it is supposed to accelerate. If manufacturers are forced to chase sales that consumers are not yet ready to make, profitability suffers. If profitability suffers, investment becomes harder. And if investment is weakened, the UK becomes a less attractive place to build the next generation of vehicles. That is precisely the wrong outcome.
The government does deserve credit for recognising the problem. I’m impressed with Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds who genuinely does seem to listen. He inherited a dogs’ breakfast of a policy. The current consultation explicitly asks whether the existing ZEV trajectory remains appropriate and is considering different ways of modifying the pathway while maintaining the longer-term transition.
The government should now be bold enough to act on the evidence. That means relaxing the near-term ZEV targets. But relaxing the targets should not mean abandoning the transition.
Instead, it should mean using the breathing space to fix the things that are really holding the transition back. Again this is something I have banged on about for some time, having driven EVs since 2014 (yes I was a crazy early-adopter).
Firstly, charging infrastructure needs to become dramatically better outside of London and the South East. For people with driveways and home charging, an EV can make enormous economic sense. For people living in flats, terraces or areas without convenient parking, the calculation can be very different. Public charging needs to be reliable, easy to use and transparent on price. It should not require consumers to navigate a maze of apps, opaque payment systems and tariffs.
Secondly, the used-EV market needs to mature. Mass adoption will not come from selling expensive new cars. It will come when ordinary households can buy good-quality used EVs at affordable prices and have confidence in battery life, residual values and running costs.
Thirdly, government needs to address the wider economics of motoring. Insurance costs, electricity prices, taxation and charging costs all influence whether consumers make the switch. Telling people to buy an EV while allowing the overall cost proposition to remain uncertain is hardly a coherent transition strategy. VAT on public charging for example needs to come down so that those who can’t access home electricity tariffs aren’t penalised
And fourthly, Britain needs to think much harder about industrial competitiveness.
If we are serious about reindustrialising Britain, or even avoiding further deindustrialisation, we can’t simultaneously impose one of the world’s most demanding EV sales mandates while leaving British manufacturers facing hugely high energy costs, trade uncertainty and intense competition from heavily subsidised Chinese producers.
That is particularly important now. Chinese manufacturers are rapidly expanding their presence in the UK. The September market showed just how quickly this is happening, with Chinese brands taking a growing share of the market.
There is an obvious irony here.
A policy designed to accelerate Britain’s transition to electric vehicles could end up accelerating the market for electric vehicles made elsewhere unless we get the industrial strategy right. That is deindustrialisation with a green badge.
The answer isn’t to slow down electrification. It is to make sure Britain can benefit from it.
That means supporting domestic production, supply chains, skills and investment while ensuring that the transition happens at a pace consumers can actually sustain.
The government has repeatedly said that it remains committed to ending the sale of new pure petrol and diesel cars by 2030 and achieving zero-emission new car and van sales by 2035.
But there is a distinction between having a long-term destination and insisting on hitting every intermediate milestone regardless of what happens in the market. We need the former, not the latter.
The ZEV mandate should therefore be relaxed, to 50% by 2030, with a more gradual glide path to 2035. The government should make clear that this is not a retreat from electrification. It is a recalibration designed to make electrification work.
The key lesson is simple. The ZEV mandate has succeeded in pushing manufacturers to invest. It has helped transform the range of EVs available to consumers. It has helped move the market.
But policy has now moved faster than demand. The sensible response is not to slam on the brakes. Nor is it to keep accelerating towards a cliff edge. It is to change gear.
Richard Parker’s intervention is important because it brings the debate back to where it should always have been: the real economy. The West Midlands cannot afford an EV transition that looks impressive on a department for Transport spreadsheet but damages the manufacturing base on which the region’s prosperity depends.
Britain needs an EV transition that consumers can afford, manufacturers can make money from and regions can build their industrial futures around. That requires more flexibility now, not less ambition for the long term.
We need to use the next few years to build the charging network, develop the used-EV market, bring down costs, strengthen British supply chains and build consumer confidence. Then let the market take off.
The EV future is coming. We don’t need to force it so hard that we risk breaking the industry that has to deliver it. The government’s ZEV review is therefore an opportunity to help the auto industry and the region. Don’t waste it.
Professor David Bailey works at the Birmingham Business School.
Professor David Bailey works at the Birmingham Business School and is a Senior Fellow at the UK in a Changing Europe programme.
Print version here John Clancy and David Bailey