Starmer needs to stop his plan to introduce | Tech News

Keir Starmer needs to stop what he’s doing and delay the UK’s petrol and diesel car ban earlier than Labour walks into a motoring disaster. Yes, it might be yet one more U-turn, however one that’s needed. It’s completely bonkers to imagine the UK will likely be in a place to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles in 4 years’ time. If Labour thinks they’ll, they are surely mad. 

Failure to act now could possibly be catastrophic, with producers already counting their losses after leaping two toes within the EV pond to discover their legs swallowed up. It’s now clearer than ever that client demand simply isn’t there at this stage. SMMT knowledge exhibits that electric car gross sales grew simply 0.1% in January, with a market share of simply 20%.

This is already massively under the Government’s EV goal of 33% EV gross sales by the top of the yr and a world away from Labour’s self-imposed zero-emission purpose. Many companies are already beginning to flip their backs on electric and return to the combustion petrol and diesel autos their clients are shopping for.

Stellantis, mum or dad company of high manufacturers resembling Vauxhall and Citroen, revealed £19billion price of losses, and they don’t seem to be the one ones.

Ford boss Jim Farley put it merely when he defined: “I think the customer has spoken. That’s the punchline.” Yes it’s Jim. Prime Minister, are you taking notice? If a drop in EV demand and producers turning their back on EVs wasn’t enough, the UK’s infrastructure continues to be a trigger for fear with simply 4 years to go till EVs are all over the place.

The UK’s rollout of electric car chargers slowed in 2025, with simply 13,500 further plugs fitted compared to the top of 2024. The determine was the smallest quantity of new chargers put in within the UK since 2022. Shouldn’t we be building more the nearer we get to a mass EV market? And not much less.

According to knowledge from ZapMap, there have been 88,513 chargers put in within the UK by the top of November 2025, it isn’t practically enough.

If all 42.4 million licensed autos had been changed in a single day with electric autos, this might be one charger for each 479 people. That doesn’t sound sustainable to me. The European Union has watered down its car ban targets, with charges solely required to construct 90% EVs by 2035.

But what does the UK do, press forward, with the DfT admitting to Express.co.uk that the coverage will come into pressure in 2030.

Labour has a probability to save face, push back the UK’s car ban targets and delay the inevitable panic earlier than it’s too late. It’s all in Keir Starmer’s fingers to hear to the market. But will he act?