Britain must build more cars because e-scooters and robots just won’t cut the mustard

Finally, the UK Government has stepped up and spoken of a new plan for personal vehicles. It’ll “kick start economic growth”. So far, so good. 

Sadly, over the decades, successive ruling parties of varying political persuasions have sung the praises of bicycles and heavily subsidised limited-hours buses (no thanks) and trains (getting worse, not better), but little else designed to take men, women and kids, plus their stuff, from their homes to workplaces, schools, shops, hospitals, holiday destinations or wherever.

So what, exactly, are the personal mobility machines our ruling politicians have in mind to comfortably, safely and legally transport the likes of pensioners and parents with young kids, pushchairs and pets door to door 24/7 in all weathers? 

How many manufacturing jobs will the ‘plan’ create and where in Britain? How much wealthier will Blighty be when profits are generated by new-look manufacturers, plus taxes paid by such firms and their decently paid workers? How great will all the above be for the nation’s productivity, coffers and morale?

The initiative I’m talking about arrives when the numbers for mass manufacturing of cars, car-like vans and larger commercial vehicles (CVs) in the UK show that production is at best stalling (in pretty much every sector) or, at worse, grinding to a painful and worrying halt (Jaguar this year, Vauxhall, Honda and others in the very recent past). 

Last Thursday, it was revealed that between January and July 2025, CV production fell 53 per cent over the same period of 2024. That’s unsustainable. A drop of less than six per cent in car output was more palatable. But even during some of the darkest Covid days (2020 and 2021), Britain produced more cars than it did last year and has so far in 2025.  

So – and apologies for stating the obvious – we simply MUST ditch our habit of making only hundreds of thousands of cars annually. Instead, a return to the circa 1.7 million we produced in 2016 is a reasonable, achievable goal. Maybe the Government’s grand plan could include, for example, financially incentivising British consumers to support British car workers to buy modest British-made cars proudly wearing ‘made in GB’ plaques.

But no. What Government wants more of are e-scooters – the cheap two-wheelers used by adults and kids, who always occupy the right places and never take to the pavements, do they? Icing on the already rancid cake: delivery robots are part of the plan(s), too. 

It’s claiming all this will “kick-start economic growth”. I’m saying it’ll be more like a kick in the teeth followed by almost certain economic mayhem for the mostly foreign-owned companies who have car factories and hundreds of thousands of employees in Britain.

We’re a proud and globally renowned car country. A naff e-scooterland we are not, and don’t want to become.

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