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Carmakers lobbied UK to revoke ban on petrol and diesel cars after 2035

BMW, Ford, Nissan and Toyota, plus parts maker Bosch, wrote joint letter to ministers in April Major carmakers privately lobbied the UK government to revoke a ban on new petrol and diesel cars after 2035, according to documents that reveal for the first time the efforts to overturn a key decarbonisation policy. BMW, Ford, Nissan and Toyota, plus the parts maker Bosch, wrote a joint letter to ministers in April calling for an “open technology approach” including petrol and diesel cars after 2035, when the government had said new cars must produce zero carbon emissions. Continue reading...

Drivers charging electric cars handed shock parking fines

EV owners were sent hefty PCNs but say some signs in private car parks fail to warn of fees to park and recharge car Does refuelling your car class as parking? The answer appears to be yes if it’s an electric vehicle. Guardian Money has been contacted by several readers who were fined after charging their cars away from home. The motorists report being caught out by signs that fail to make clear that charging points are subject to parking tariffs or to store opening times. Also, they have found some chargers being advertised as available for use when it would be a breach of the car park’s terms and conditions to use them. Continue reading...

Britain’s cars and SUVs are growing bigger – but there is a way to stop this deadly ‘carspreading’ | Christian Wolmar

Larger vehicles crowd our roads and are far more dangerous to pedestrians. Let’s curb them before they do even more damage We need an Ozempic for cars. They are growing at a phenomenal rate, wreaking havoc on the roads, squeezing out smaller vehicles in car parks and endangering pedestrians. Like ever-hungry teenagers, cars in Europe are growing, on average, a centimetre wider every year, according to new research reported by the Guardian. And fewer than half of new cars in the UK can fit into a conventional parking space. As there is, remarkably, no width restriction for cars, no law can stop this growth until they reach the size of HGVs – that is, 2.55m wide – which are restricted. Christian Wolmar is a transport commentator and author of The Liberation Line, the story of the railwaymen who rebuilt the railways in Europe after D-day Continue reading...

EV charger rollout in UK slows amid political uncertainty and rise in installation costs

Growth in charge points falls markedly despite surge in number of rapid-charging units Business live – latest updates The UK’s rollout of electric vehicle chargers has slowed amid challenging cost pressures and uncertainty over government sales targets. Charger companies installed 5,100 public charge points in the first half of 2026, pushing the total to 121,171, according to Zapmap, a data company. That was a 10% increase on the same point a year before – well below growth rates above 40% in 2024. Continue reading...

As auto costs rise, will the US miss the golden age of electric vehicles?

Shifting demands and political ideology have left the industry vulnerable to global competition from cheap Chinese cars Earlier this month, an intriguing new Detroit-based electric vehicle startup hit the market – Slate Auto , a Jeff Bezos-backed venture offering something US buyers rarely see these days – a pick up truck billed as “affordable”. Its base price is $24,950, making it one of the lowest-cost autos in the US market and close to half the price of the average new vehicle. But as the US contends with sharply rising auto costs, even Slate may be getting left behind in the global electric vehicle (EV) transition. The global EV industry is entering a golden age powered by cheap Chinese cars that can be bought for as little as $10,000. Continue reading...