UK’s ZEV mandate risks over-flexibility and opaqueness

New Automotive, a UK-based transport research organisation, is concerned that the country’s zero emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate potentially provides OEMs with too many opportunities to meet credit targets without increasing the number of ZEVs they produce. And the current plan for the Department for Transport (DfT)  to not publish public information on how manufacturers meet their targets in the coming years “would be bad”, says its CEO Ben Nelmes.

A proposed link between the UK’s CO₂ emissions regulations, in which manufacturers are encouraged to improve the fuel efficiency of emission-producing vehicles, and the ZEV mandate is the most worrying flexibility. In its final recommendations to the mandate’s recently closed consultation period, New Automotive argues that there “should be no link between the two certificate systems” as such a flexibility would contradict the government’s aim to ensure that OEMs focus their R&D efforts on ZEVs.