2030 ICE ban: diesel vans and some luxury cars are safe… for now

Low-volume car makers will be exempted from Labour’s changes to the ZEV Mandate, which pull the ban on new petrol and diesel sales forward from 2035 to 2030.

The global trade turmoil following the announcement of US president Trump’s tariffs has given Labour the political cover it needed to significantly water down its pre-election plan to toughen up the ZEV Mandate. Facing fierce resistance from a car industry that claimed the 2030 plan would threaten jobs and hit UK competitiveness due to insufficient consumer demand for EVs, the government has been reviewing its response to the consultation it launched in late 2024 as a result of that industry pressure.

Its response was finally announced last night, and although the government has brought forward plans for a ban on sales of new pure petrol and diesel cars to 2030 as promised, it has agreed major concessions. Most significantly, the government says it will allow the continued sale of hybrid and plug-in hybrid models from 2030 to 2035, while offering an exemption to the ZEV Mandate to ‘micro’ and small-volume manufacturers (MVMs and SVMs) including Aston Martin, Bentley, Lotus and McLaren so that they can continue selling pure petrol models until 2035.

“To support smaller manufacturers, MVMs (fewer than 1,000 registrations) and SVMs (between 1,000 and 2,499 registrations) will be exempt from the 2030 to 2035 hybrid requirements. SVMs will be required to meet a nominal CO2 reduction across their fleets post-2030 which will be agreed with them,” the government says.

The new plans also reduce pressure on van manufacturers to meet onerous ZEV Mandate targets. Under the existing rule 70 per cent of new vans sold in Great Britain would have to be zero emission by 2030, increasing to 100 per cent by 2035, but Labour has announced that changes to the ZEV Mandate will mean “no additional technology requirements will be imposed on vans. This means that petrol, diesel, HEV and PHEV vans will all be permitted until 2035. As now, van manufacturers will just need to make sure that in the period from 2030 until 2035 the overall CO2 emissions of their non-ZEV fleet get no worse than they were in 2021.”

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