EV craze is killing our car industry

It is hard to see where all of Ed Miliband’s ‘green jobs’ are coming from, but we are certainly losing existing manufacturing jobs. Net zero has just claimed a very significant scalp. Stellantis, the parent company of Vauxhall, has said that it plans to close its plant at Luton, where it makes the Vivaro van, at the cost of 1,100 jobs (although some work will be transferred to its other UK plant at Ellesmere Port).

This has been coming for months; Stellantis chief executive Carlos Tavares warned earlier this year that the Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) mandate is making car-making unviable in Britain.

Here is the problem: ZEV obliges manufacturers to make sure that 22 per cent of the cars they sell in Britain over the course of this year are purely electric models. This is a proportion that rises steadily every year until it reaches 80 per cent by 2035 (or 70 per cent for vans).