Poor air quality has been linked to many deaths in recent years. Following France’s example, the UK government has recently announced that it will ban all fossil-fuel powered cars from the road by 2040. This move is, however, not intended to hit hybrids and plug-in hybrids.
The paper on this matter has been published by DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) and is intended to improve air quality.
As of 2017, just four percent of the vehicles sold in the UK were hybrids or fully electric – taking this to 100% in just 23 years will surely give some headaches to car manufacturers and sales people, not to mention the effort of erasing the misconceptions around electric vehicles and range anxiety from the buyers’ minds.
BMW has also been tackling with electric vehicles for some time now. The company has announced that they’ll be producing an electric Mini for the UK market.
Poor air quality is the culprit for 40,000 premature deaths in the UK alone. Globally, it accounts for 5.5 million deaths a year, according to BBC. Most car pollution-related pollution deaths are linked to diesel exhausts: 29,000 down to particulate matter (PM2.5) and 11,000 down to nitrogen oxides (NOx). Again, in the UK alone.
Other countries in Europe, like Romania, are heavily subsidizing new electric car sales, by up to 10,000 Euros and plug-in hybrids by up to 5,000 euros.
[picture via getty]
