00:00It is a busy day as regards car announcements today and the first thing we want to talk
00:07to you about is this differential between, I actually don't understand it to be quite
00:16truthful right, there's going to be a differential between certain cars as to whether they'll
00:20be regarded as green or not, you explain it to us.
00:27So what we're setting out today is our plans to give the British car industry certainty,
00:34stability and confidence. So we are formally confirming our manifesto commitment which
00:41is to reinstate the 2030 date for the phase out of the sale of new petrol and diesel cars
00:49but we're also confirming that in the period from 2030 to 2035 the car manufacturers will
00:55be able to continue to sell hybrid vehicles, so those either full hybrids like the Toyota
01:02Prius or the Nissan e-Power as well as those ones that can plug in and alongside that we're
01:09giving manufacturers extra flexibilities to help them to get there. So if they're selling
01:14more of those hybrid vehicles, they're cutting carbon emissions, that's the really important
01:21thing that we're going through to 2035 when all new vehicles will need to be zero emission,
01:29probably battery electric. We're also saying that for vans you'll be able to continue to
01:35buy vans which are either petrol, diesel or hybrid through to 2035 as long as the carbon
01:42emissions are coming down. And we're confirming that for those really small, yeah sure.
01:48I was just going to say there seems to be an impression that this advantage
01:53that you're introducing here is only for expensive cars, luxury cars.
01:58No, not at all. This is for all our car manufacturers, all the names that we would
02:07anticipate like Vauxhall, like Ford, like Nissan, like Jaguar Land Rover. We want to back our
02:15British car industry, we want to protect jobs, we want to create jobs. We have the
02:20opportunity for the UK to be global leaders in the transition to electric vehicles and
02:27that's why we're giving them this certainty now, setting out and that clarity so they
02:32know exactly what they can do between now and 2030 and now and through to 2035. What
02:39we are saying is for those really small and micro manufacturers, the likes of the supercars
02:45like McLaren and Lotus, we're saying that they're exempt from the mandate. They need
02:52to get to zero emission by 2035 but we're not expecting them to meet the same targets
02:59as the bigger manufacturers. So you're relaxing net zero measures. How
03:03does the Energy Secretary Ed Miliband feel about that? Because there could be a split
03:08in the Cabinet over this, couldn't there? No, we're absolutely not relaxing our commitment
03:15to getting to net zero. In fact, we're restating it. We promised in our manifesto that we would
03:22end the sale of pure diesel and petrol cars from 2030 and that's what we're confirming
03:29today. But what we are doing is making sure that we give our British car industry the
03:34opportunity to make the change to upgrade to electric vehicles in a considered way.
03:40We're listening to them. We launched a consultation just before Christmas that closed in February.
03:47We've been talking to industry intensively over recent months about the flexibilities
03:52that they need to get us to that net zero position and that's what we're confirming
03:58today. And of course we're working to give consumers confidence as well. We know that
04:04last year we had the largest EV market in Europe, record sales of EVs just last month
04:12up 43% on the previous year and that's why we're rolling out charging infrastructure
04:18across the country because we know that if people are going to make that switch they
04:22need to feel confident that when they're away from home, if they've got a charger at home,
04:27that they'll still be able to charge their car up so they can make those long journeys.
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