Government needs to ‘do their bit’ to stimulate EV demand in UK – Vauxhall boss

The Government should be helping to give buyers a ‘nudge’ towards electric vehicles through the use of incentives, Vauxhall’s UK boss has said. 

James Taylor, managing director of Vauxhall in the UK, told Car Dealer that the Government needs to ‘do their bit’ to help stimulate private demand for EVs, 

But he added that the incentives wouldn’t need to go as far as the previous plug-in car grant – which reduced an EV’s price by up to £1,500 before it was axed in 2022 – and instead would be used to ‘reward’ drivers ‘for what we all think is doing the right thing in terms of moving towards a greener, cleaner future’. 

Speaking to Car Dealer at the UK launch of the new Vauxhall Grandland in Suffolk, Taylor said that current ZEV mandate targets would make things ‘very difficult’ for the industry over the next few years, but added that he was ‘confident’ that Vauxhall would remain compliant – for this year, at least. 

He said: ‘Now, we’re in a good place because of the multi-powertrain strategy and we’re in a good place because we’ve just launched two new cars (Grandland and Frontera) into the biggest electric segment. 

‘So for us, I think we’ve got a really good possibility of achieving the target, but the industry as a whole is tricky. 

‘You’ve got many of our competitors that are a long way behind their mandate compliance and they’re going to face some difficult choices as to how to get themselves compliant over the three-year period, or they’re going to have to pay significant fines.’

The industry has this week been holding meetings with ministers about the impact of the ZEV mandate with Nissan recently coming out and calling for ‘urgent action’.

Taylor says that being able to interchange credits between cars and light commercial vehicles – currently, the two cannot be swapped – would help to make meeting targets easier. 

He added: ‘Having some ability to take some of the credits from there (electric vans) and apply against cars [could’ potentially take some of the pressure off.’

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