UK Dealers Are 'Rationing' Gas Cars And Pushing EVs To Meet Government Quota

At least 22% of new cars sold in the U.K. in 2024 were supposed to be electric, but the target isn’t being met.

Dealership Showroom

Andrei Nedelea

By: Andrei Nedelea

Sep 6, 2024 at 10:00am ET

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If you order a gas car today from certain U.K. dealers, you will take delivery next year even though it could be delivered sooner.
This rationing of ICE vehicle sales is what manufacturers and their affiliated dealer networks are doing to meet the U.K. government's annual EV quota.

As the United Kingdom aims to transition to a future when it will only allow the sale of new cars if they are electric, it’s imposing a growing annual EV quota that manufacturers must meet. The country has a zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate, whose target for 2024 is for at least 22% of all new cars sold to be electric. However, with slumping buyer interest in EVs, the annual target will be missed, so dealers are artificially pushing back the delivery of combustion cars to hopefully get buyers to choose EVs, which they will take delivery of much sooner.

The Telegraph points to data provided by the Society for Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), which reduced its prediction that 19.8% of all new cars sold in the U.K. this year would be electric. The SMMT now expects only 18.5% of new cars bought in 2024 to be electric and even this prediction is boosted by companies adding EVs to their fleets, not private buyers going out and choosing an electric car.

Robert Forrester, the chief executive of Vertu Motors, claims that if you order a new car today at certain locations, it will arrive in February. The only reason it takes so long is because manufacturers don’t want to miss the required EV quota for 2024. This has apparently sent more people looking for a car on the second-hand market, which has seen a boost in demand.

Forrester went on to say that “in some franchises there’s a restriction on supply of petrol cars and hybrid cars, which is actually where the demand is. It’s almost as if we can’t supply the cars that people want, but we’ve got plenty of the cars that maybe they don’t want.” He explained that the manufacturers “are trying to avoid the fines. So they’re constraining the ability for us to supply petrol cars,” even though EVs are “not easily finding homes.”

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The cooling of electric car demand has been felt in many markets around the world, and it is so noticeable that it has made manufacturers reiterate (and often postpone) their full transition to only making EVs. This is at odds with governments' plans to phase out the sale of new combustion cars by the end of the decade or by 2035, and it could result in friction between them and the manufacturers and a lack of supply for the vehicles that people want to buy (electrified rather than fully electric cars).

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In the U.K., the government plans to impose an increased EV quota every year until it reaches 80% in 2030. By 2035, current plans indicate that it will not allow the sale of anything other than electric vehicles. Other European nations have announced a very similar time frame for stopping sales of all non-electric vehicles, but they seem just as difficult to impose given buyers’ current preferences, which seem to be trending away from EVs and more toward hybrids and plug-in hybrids.

The carmakers aren’t pleased either and are backtracking on their EV plans. They’ve invested billions to develop and produce EVs in high volumes, assured by governing bodies that these vehicles would sell. However, they aren’t selling as well as they had hoped, especially now that many European governments are cutting back on tax credits for EVs and other benefits that encourage EV ownership. Help from the government made EVs (which are usually more expensive than equivalent ICE vehicles) cheaper and spurred demand artificially, but it seems that without it, the buyers will revert to driving combustion cars rather than having to pay more for an EV.

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