UK carmakers on track to meet EV sales target despite intense lobbying to lower quota
Carmakers are on track to meet existing UK electric car sales targets despite having successfully lobbied the government to water them down.Electric car sales made up 21.6% of sales in the first half of 2025, only marginally below the 22.06% share needed to meet existing rules once concessions are taken into account, according to an analysis by New AutoMotive, a thinktank.The Conservative government under Rishi Sunak brought in the zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate.
It forced carmakers to sell an increasing proportion of electric cars or face steep fines of up to £15,000 for every vehicle above their fossil fuel quota.However, in April the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, confirmed the Labour government would relax the rules after an intensive lobbying campaign by the UK car industry against the policy.The Vauxhall maker Stellantis blamed its decision to close its Luton van factory on the mandate, although earlier comments by executives appeared to undermine that argument.Carmakers are aiming for a headline target of 28% electric sales to avoid fines this year, but “flexibilities” within the rules mean the effective target – as calculated by New AutoMotive – is much lower.That is because manufacturers are allowed to borrow electric sales from later years and to gain credit for cutting emissions by selling more hybrids.
After the government climbdown manufacturers are to be given more freedom on how they meet their yearly targets and to face lower fines,Ben Nelmes, the chief executive of New AutoMotive, said: “Carmakers are within touching distance of their targets for 2025 before taking into account the government’s decision to weaken the targets for this year,“This impressive progress should reassure ministers that ambitious targets spur the innovation and dynamism the UK needs to achieve net zero and get ahead in the global shift towards electric vehicles,”Weakening the rules could benefit individual carmakers in particular,New AutoMotive’s analysis suggests the Japanese carmaker Nissan is the farthest away from what it needs to achieve in 2025, as it waits for its factory in Sunderland in northern England to start production of its new Leaf electric car.
Toyota and JLR, maker of the Jaguar and Land Rover brands, are also well behind their effective targets.Sign up to Business TodayGet set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningafter newsletter promotionThe decision to weaken the targets is expected to mean significant extra carbon emissions, despite government claims that the impact would be “negligible”.The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders chief executive, Mike Hawes, said that with one in four new car buyers choosing an EV last month, the market was moving forward “but not at the pace needed”.“The headline figures belie the fact that just 13% of private buyers have gone fully electric this year, with growth driven by fleets which benefit from compelling fiscal incentives,” said Hawes.“The lack of natural demand among private consumers has forced manufacturers into unsustainable discounting and led them to seek increased regulatory flexibilities to avoid the double whammy of having to incentivise sales and pay punitive fines.
”Britons were wary of going electric for a number of reasons, including higher vehicle costs and an inconsistent and expensive array of public charge points, Hawes said, adding: “The best way to encourage drivers to trade in their older, more polluting vehicles for new zero emission ones would be for government to emulate other countries and reintroduce the compelling purchase incentives it once provided.”
Kae Tempest: Self Titled review – the rhythms in his lyrics are still so distinct
On a track called Bless the Bold Future, Kae Tempest wrestles with the urge to bring children into a world beset by catastrophe; the landscape of the 39-year-old’s fifth album Self Titled is indeed characterised by pain, anxiety and suffering. On Hyperdistillation, a man dies sleeping rough outside uninhabited penthouses as NHS backlogs threaten lives, and the ravey Diagnoses presents mental health issues as “the right response to a world gone wrong,” while Statue in the Square’s doomy grime reckons with a climate of transphobia (Tempest came out as non-binary in 2020 and earlier this year revealed his gender transition).And yet, there is something irrepressibly joyous about this album, which is essentially a collection of love letters: to the trans community, to the Londoner’s home town, to his partner. Tempest’s ability to imbue societal decay and personal torment with strange beauty, via lyricism honed on the performance poetry scene, is unparalleled, and his roots in the art form are still very much evident in his earnest, rhythmic delivery.Sometimes, the actual music struggles to keep up and fit in
Mark Gatiss: ‘What does Benedict Cumberbatch smell like? Strawberries’
As the writer and actor unveils his new detective show Bookish, he sits down for a chat about famous sleuths, the odds of a return to Royston Vasey and what it’s like working with Tom CruiseMark Gatiss arrived on our screens playing a variety of grotesques in The League of Gentlemen: mysterious butcher Hilary Briss; palm-reader Mama Lazarou; the buck-toothed, mullet-sporting job-seeker Mickey Michaels; and many more. He co-founded and co-wrote the BBC comedy with Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson after meeting them at college, and has teamed up with Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat to write and cameo in numerous episodes of the Time Lord drama, before the pair created the smash-hit update of Sherlock, in which Gatiss also appeared as Holmes’s brother Mycroft, and another BBC series, Dracula. If that weren’t enough, Gatiss has also popped up in Game of Thrones, Operation Mincemeat and the last two Mission: Impossible films.Now he’s back in a new detective drama Bookish, in which he plays a crime-solving book emporium owner. We caught up to chat about why he loves the 1940s; whether there will be more Sherlock, Dracula or League of Gentlemen; and what he’d like to do with Tom Cruise
To Kill a Mockingbird: a call to compassion that’s more urgent than ever
It’s impossible to watch Robert Mulligan’s 1962 adaptation of Harper Lee’s great novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, and not be moved by Gregory Peck’s performance as Atticus Finch, a small-town American lawyer with an unfailing moral compass. Light years from the archetypal legal eagle, he radiates good old-fashioned decency, espousing tolerance and compassion that sadly feels almost passe amid the Sturm und Drang of the current world.“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view,” goes one of Finch’s great lines, sourced from Lee’s book. In perhaps the film’s most memorable scene, Peck deliverers a grand courtroom monologue, declaring that “all men are created equal”, imploring the jury to “in the name of God, believe Tom Robinson,” the black man accused of raping a white woman – a crime he didn’t commit.When I think about this film, my mind recalls that monologue in vivid colour – even though it’s shot in monochrome
My night at the museum … for an ‘adult sleepover’, with lots of dinosaurs and no kids allowed
Museums around the world are opening up for grownups wanting to explore by torchlight and sleep among exhibits. Clem Bastow heads to Melbourne Museum to try one outGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailIt’s about 1.30am and I’ve just heard a spooky noise – the sort of noise that would usually send me shooting out of bed with a torch and baseball bat to investigate my no doubt impending doom. Fortunately, on this occasion I am not alone in my flat but surrounded by 39 other nerds sleeping (relatively) soundly in the Dinosaur Walk at Melbourne Museum. The source of the noise is a nearby tawny frogmouth
‘Someone compared it to Bohemian Rhapsody’: Wookie on making UK garage classic Battle
‘We added a level of sophistication to garage. When we were trying to get it on the radio, one station said it was too intelligent and they wouldn’t play it’People say Battle reminds them of some really good years for Britain as a country. We were entering a new millennium, everyone was running their own business, making money and the underground record industry was thriving. I wanted to do a UK garage version of Southern Freeez, by the 80s UK funk band Freeez. Initially, Battle was going to be another instrumental, and then Lain, the singer, came in the room and goes: “Let me put something on this
Manchester Museum asks visitors if Egyptian woman’s body should be taken off display
One of Europe’s leading museums is asking visitors if it should continue to display the body of an ancient Egyptian woman 200 years after it was brought to the UK by cotton merchants, as it “decolonises” some of its most famous exhibits.Manchester Museum, which in May was named 2025’s European museum of the year, is running a consultation on the future of Asru, a woman who lived in Thebes, the ancient city in the location of modern-day Luxor, 2,700 years ago.A plaque at the museum asks: “Should we continue to display the body of Asru?”, inviting visitors to submit answers in a postbox underneath.It adds: “Asru’s mummified body was unwrapped at the Manchester Natural History Society in April 1825. She has regularly been on display for the two centuries since
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