Currently, we are in election manifesto season, and the Greens have published theirs and given their perspective, transport is a main ‘target’ for them.
The current target for the end of ICE vehicle sales is 2035. The Conservatives are holding to that, with the Lib Dems reverting back to the original 2030 date. But the Greens would bring this forward to 20 2027; 3 years from now, and all vehicles on the road to non-polluting – Electric or Hydrogen – by 2030.
Finally, they also want to bring the overall Net Zero date back to 2040.
These are ambitious targets to say the least and would require both immense support for people to change their vehicles to electric vehicles and overwhelming support from the British public which is probably not there at present.
The Greens mention that £5bn a year would be required for the length of the parliament to ensure that everyone who has a vehicle, has access to charging points – people who live in flats or who must park on public car parks because they live on main roads.
Their funding for this would come from measures such as road pricing, Road Tax based upon the weight of the vehicle and stopping all new road building.
Finally, they would encourage more freight onto the rail network and off roads.
They claim that all their proposals have been costed, but if electric vehicles are the way they wish to go, scrapping nuclear power is going to make things more difficult.
It will be interesting to see how this goes down with the British public.
