Outgoing Volkswagen Group UK boss Alex Smith has said there must be "complete coherence" in all government policies to speed up the shift to EVs and that this is essential for car makers, "given the product investments already made".
Smith left the German company at the end of November and has been replaced by Damien O'Sullivan, who most recently led Audi in Ireland.
Smith is broadly supportive of the government's zero-emission (ZEV) mandate for giving "a clear legislative path" for car makers to plan for while also "giving an incentive for those that wish to invest in infrastructure".
However, he believes the decision to review it was right, as "you have no certainty as to what the natural rate of [EV] take-up" is or what "the trajectory of the natural rate of take-up is going to be".
"Therefore it's sensible to have a degree of flexibility," Smith said, particularly as the past three years of EV sales were "broadly flat".
One route to compliance with the ZEV mandate is to restrict sales of ICE cars, but demand for new car sales in general is suppressed, so this wouldn't lead to a boost in EV sales, only an artificial increase in their market share.
More broadly, Smith said the private car sales market needed a "boost", because it's currently "operating at financial-crisis levels".
He said: "The retail market year-to-date is lower than 2020, when we were shut for three months [due to the Covid pandemic].
"The first thing you've got to do is boost the market. The second thing you've got to do is improve the mix of zero-emission vehicles. So if you've got a legislative approach which could have the effect of reducing the overall market and not improving the mix of zero-emission vehicles, you've failed."
To that end, Smith "hasn't changed" his view that there also must be incentives for EV buyers, as the current stagnation in retail sales of EVs is "very concerning" given that so many new EVs have been introduced to the market (32 this year by Smith's count), backed up with some £1.5 billion of incentives.
"Retail incentivisation or incentivisation for private consumers is really important, not simply for the mathematical elasticity effect of 'if you reduce the price, you'll sell more volume'.
"But where it's really important is it signals a clear direction of travel that zero-emission vehicles are the way to go, because they are an essential component of the decarbonisation of road-surface transportation.
"It would be great going forward to see congruence between all stakeholders in the way that we approach the messaging to the public, because polarisation helps no one. It's the coherence and congruence of the message that will be really, really useful."
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