Former Aston Martin CEO and automotive leader, investor and commentator Andy Palmer has described parts of the UK government’s approach to securing the industry’s electrified future as “insanely stupid”.
Quizzed on the need for an industrial strategy to support the automotive industry, as mooted by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) recently as part of a £106 billion economic growth plan by 2030, Palmer said: “I'm apolitical, and always have been, but unfortunately the UK is behind on almost everything. We have a concept of 'small government', which means applying a laissez-faire approach to letting market forces decide where we're going, but unfortunately that is at odds with what the rest of the world is doing.
“If I look at the transport space, and the disruption in that space, I don't think it's cool to sit back and see where market forces take it. It's a classic economic theory that just doesn't apply to the reality. What I can see is that every country that cares about their involvement in transport, and which cares about the jobs in transport-related roles, are all positively encroaching upon the space to positively influence it.
“Just look at the Chinese, United States, Japanese, Indians, the European Union. They are all offering incentives and protecting their interests. You can't sit in little old England and say you believe in letting market economics decide the path when the market is so distorted by the activities of others.”
The SMMT set out five pledges to grow the UK automotive industry: to attract investment and secure manufacturing; build a reliable UK-wide charging network; provide investment for EV manufacturing-specific skills; secure access to global markets for the tariff-free export of British-made vehicles, batteries and green technologies; and ensure net-zero-critical industries can access affordable and zero-emission energy.
However, Palmer said the government’s current rhetoric around electrification was misplaced and potentially harmful to the industry’s long-term health. The SMMT estimates that just under 200,000 people are employed in automotive manufacturing, with a further 600,000 working across the sector as a whole.
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So, saliant... until reaching the sections on climate and e-fuel.
"In reality, as a country, we are such a small contributor to CO2 it's not really helping the climate either."
Every country is a small contributor compared to China and the US, and many use this as an excuse for inaction. The US uses China's greater carbon intensity as an excuse for inaction. China is an autocratic state so can't be relied on to enact popular policies - but they only comprise 27% of global CO2, which leaves up to 73% of the world's contributors stalled with whataboutism. Every little carbon reduction helps the situation, there is no single sweeping change that can fix the whole thing. Palmer is using Trumpian environmental politics here.
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“All the UK's 2030 legislation to stop selling purely combustion-engined cars five years ahead of anyone else is doing is exporting jobs."
Jobs that will nearly all be gone by 2035, probably less as many manufacturers are aiming to stop combustion sales around the 2030 mark. Whereas beating other countries to the mark with full electrification can secure those jobs indefinitely. Britain's legislation still allows hybrids to be sold until 2035, so the rules are functionally more-or-less the same as the EU's - the latter is effectively stealth-banning pure combustion sales by 2030 by instituting a 49.5 g/km fleet average CO2 limit.
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“That's utterly stupid. Those lobbying for e-fuels were Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche and so on... and all their competitors are based in the UK. So if we ban e-fuels in the UK, and create no incentive to even test them here, what do you think will happen? Either our own, boutique industry will be bankrupted, or it'll move to Europe. It is insanely stupid.”
There is no ban on e-fuels, nobody is even discussing that - people keeping their combustion engined cars (of whom there will be many) will be free to pay through the nose for massively energy-intensive e-fuel. Nor is there a ban on developing and testing combustion engines. Hell, in Europe the truly boutique manufacturers (<1000 sales/year) are exempt from the sales ban entirely, and it's likely that the UK will follow suit.
But it's pretty clear that e-fuel lobbying is an attempt by vested interests to maintain the status quo, it's not being supported for cars by a majority of environmental scientists.
If a point is ever reached where e-fuel is being produced sustainably in billion litre per day scale, the industry will gain majority environmental support, and a discussion can happen about the viability of mass produced combustion engines. In the real world though, it makes no sense: switch every car to run on e-fuel, and it would necessitate more than doubling the world's electricity generation - and most of that extra power would need to come from renewable or nuclear electricity to have carbon emissions on par with today's electric cars, let alone EVs powered and manufactured with this massive super-green grid.
“That's utterly stupid. Those lobbying for e-fuels were Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche and so on... and all their competitors are based in the UK. So if we ban e-fuels in the UK, and create no incentive to even test them here, what do you think will happen? Either our own, boutique industry will be bankrupted, or it'll move to Europe. It is insanely stupid.”
There is no ban on e-fuels, nobody is even discussing that - people keeping their combustion engined cars (of whom there will be many) will be free to pay through the nose for massively energy-intensive e-fuel. Nor is there a ban on developing and testing combustion engines. Hell, in Europe the truly boutique manufacturers (1000 sales/year) are exempt from the sales ban entirely, and it's likely that the UK will follow suit.
But it's pretty clear that e-fuel lobbying is an attempt by vested interests to maintain the status quo, it's not being supported for cars by a majority of environmental scientists.
If a point is ever reached where e-fuel is being produced sustainably in billion litre per day scale, the industry will gain majority environmental support, and a discussion can happen about the viability of mass produced combustion engines. In the real world though, it makes no sense: switch every car to run on e-fuel, and it would necessitate more than doubling the world's electricity generation - and most of that extra power would need to come from renewable or nuclear electricity to have carbon emissions on par with today's electric cars, let alone EVs powered and manufactured with this massive super-green grid.
“That's utterly stupid. Those lobbying for e-fuels were Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche and so on... and all their competitors are based in the UK. So if we ban e-fuels in the UK, and create no incentive to even test them here, what do you think will happen? Either our own, boutique industry will be bankrupted, or it'll move to Europe. It is insanely stupid.”
There is no ban on e-fuels, nobody is even discussing that - people keeping their combustion engined cars (of whom there will be many) will be free to pay through the nose for massively energy-intensive e-fuel. Nor is there a ban on developing and testing combustion engines. Hell, in Europe the truly boutique manufacturers (1000 sales/year) are exempt from the sales ban entirely, and it's likely that the UK will follow suit.
But it's pretty clear that e-fuel lobbying is an attempt by vested interests to maintain the status quo, it's not being supported for cars by a majority of environmental scientists.
If a point is ever reached where e-fuel is being produced sustainably in billion litre per day scale, the industry will gain majority environmental support, and a discussion can happen about the viability of mass produced combustion engines. In the real world though, it makes no sense: switch every car to run on e-fuel, and it would necessitate more than doubling the world's electricity generation - and most of that extra power would need to come from renewable or nuclear electricity to have carbon emissions on par with today's electric cars, let alone EVs powered and manufactured with this massive super-green grid.