We'll all be laughing about this in a couple of decades when the fossil fuels have all run out and we're beating each other to death for a working Zippo.

Maybe crying a bit, too.

It will probably take a lot longer, but Tesla is already making massive research efforts to improve battery life, so electric cars may become cheaper and better. Change is often gradual, think of the move from unleaded petrol or people not burning coal on open fires, leading to cleaner air. We've had about 50 years of North Sea Gas, probably about another 10-15 to go, but it will need replacing by something eventually, and hopefully it will be by sustainable energy.

to be honest I remember back in the 70s when we were convinced that we had about 5-10 years worth of petrol left, tops, I also remember the huge amount of 'P' taking one of the lads had to put up with when he predicted petrol being a pound a gallon soon, I mean, a pound a gallon,.... AS IF!!

Seriously though our love affair with fossil fuel has got to come to an end sooner or later, time to see if another 70s myth was true, the one about the bloke who invented an engine that runs on tap water as efficiently as the infernal combustion engine runs on petrol, but the big petrol companies either bought him out or bumped him off, depending on who was telling it.

In an ideal world this would be welcomed, but it just isn't practical to ban petrol engines - What are they going to replace them with? Is that alternative going be cheaper and affordable for everyday person?

"Derrick" from Newcastle as mentioned by a previous FM, is going to laugh at that this at idea and then joke with his mates in the van on how Labour indeed to ban petrol engines???

I like radical ideas but they need to have some semblance of reality to them.

What is the problem?

Doctors are already calling for the removal of Diesel vehicles.

What is being proposed is from the 2030's the phasing out of petrol cars, we already have electric racing cars...and if driverless cars takes off, will people need to own a car they could just summons one with the blink of an eye.

New Diesels should be strongly discouraged. The government is wholly to blame for the situation we are now in with NOx & particulates because a decade or so back they thought it would be a quick win on CO2 to persuade people to move to diesel. They did this through the tax regime.

But now it turns out that technology just can't make diesel cars clean enough, and manufacturers have been resorting to bending the truth / outright cheating on tests for diesel vehicles which perform massively worse on emissions in the real world.

Anyone who lives and works in a city will know that the air is terrible - you just need to go for a day out by the sea to smell the difference. Whether we ever know exactly how many people dying from heart disease / strokes / respiratory problems are directly due to diesel I don't know, but it will doubtless be a major contributory factor.

Removing all tax incentives for Diesel is the first step that should be taken immediately. Petrol cars are now much more efficient than they were even a few years ago and produce less CO2, but don't have the NOx / particulates issue, so people should be thinking of their next car as being a petrol one or, preferably, a hybrid.

We are some way from all electric cars yet except for rich people travelling mostly around urban areas.

Good 'post-truth' title for the thread. Hey, the Labour Party are looking at a whole range of ideas. Let's just pretend it's a policy announcement!

It's what they do, I am happy to notice the ever increasing numbers of people who are noticing that the emperor is starkers though.

We're a net importer of oil at the moment, so even if we have to import electricity I'd rather rely on the connectors we have with our near neighbours than shipping oil from Saudi etc.

I'm sure it's the case we import gas (via pipeline or LNG carrier ship) for the gas fired power stations (CCGT).

The National Grid data online is always worth a look: http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Unsurprisingly after 100 years+ of research and development, the internal combustion engine is still one of the most efficient ways of powering a motor vehicle. Lighter, low drag, fuel efficient 100+ mpg ICE cars are the way we should be heading. But at the moment we're not, with behemoth 4x4 SUVs in fashion.

Traffic congestion creates invisible tunnels of ICE exhaust pollution, this is the problem.

You seem to share Corbyn's big city mentality. Try summoning anything in Cornwall or Cumbria , or try getting out of Ceredigion or Caithness on a low battery, or planning to stop for hours, on a long journey, to charge the car.

Electric cars will only take off when the battery will take you on the longest journey you think you will ever want to do, when there's a charging point, at least as near as every petrol station, when recharging takes as long as refilling, and when there's an equivalent of a spare can of petrol.

And many drivers won't touch one, till it goes as fast as their current model, and the price is the same or or less.

its a great idea, that Corbyn has probably picked up hanging out with his Green mates in Islington , before he gets on his bike to go home, or pops down to Finsbury Park tube to go on some rally.

I'm no Labour or Corbyn supporter, but the fact is that fossil fuels are a finite resource, and our heavy dependency on petrol, diesel and other oil based fuels means we are going to face an energy crisis in the future unless we do something about it. OPEC will continue to control oil prices, and the less there is, the more it will cost. We know big infrastructure changes take decades to implement, so far better to make these changes now, rather than later when we have to do it.

Well it is a policy that plays well in his fiefdom of London, where the average car ownership is 0.2 per family because of the great public transport links and the relatively short journeys, etc.

Of course Corbyn sees nothing beyond this.

In the North, Labours other heartland, car ownership is 1.2 per family because they cannot rely on public transport and they have much farther to travel per journey.

Who is surprised by what is driving his ideology?




Maggie

Should Labour just pretend it will be around in unlimited amounts forever? Because then car ownership will become a privilege for the rich, and the Northerners will need a study pair of clogs because they will be walking everywhere.

If we are going to set ourselves up for an equitable, fair post-petrol future, we have to start sorting it out now.

What does this have to do with anything? Nobody is saying people can't have cars. He's looking at the possibility of phasing out the sale of new petrol cars by 2025/30. A policy being considered by a number of other countries.

People will be allowed to keep their current petrol cars and will still be able to buy 2nd hand petrol cars after 2025.

Petrol will become less and prevalent as technology advances in electronic etc. At least then as a nation we can get off our knees and stop kissing the feet of Kingdom Saudi Arabia, who's oil we need to produce the petrol.

You'd hope the general population agreed that getting rid of pollution is a great step, but unfortunately it probably is unpopular, and more steps towards being unelectable.

Indeed, alienating Saudi Oil, therefore it's state and Wahhabism which is closely linked to ISIS/Daesh, win win.

Until electric cars can get same fuel range as diesel and petrol, then people will still stay with these cars. Charging is also a huge problem as is the cost of the batteries.

The technology is advancing all the time and who knows where it will be in 20 years time regarding electric cars. I'm sure when petrol driven cars were first introduced there were very few petrol stations.

Manufacturers have been creating Hybrid cars so see a swing away from petrol, the only fly in the ointment could be 70 year old Gas guzzling President elect Donald Trump in his eagerness to make America great again by going back in time.

The move to electric is inevitable, but more than that I'm not even sure that people will want a car. For those of my generation, and the generations either side learning to drive and having a car was a right of passage, it was the time when we were free from the Mum & Dad taxi service, it was freedom to be out when we wanted. But that goes out the window if you don't need to even drive the vehicle, or even own it.

The car which has become a symbol of freedom for many young people - has a considerable ecological damage and not just because of the chemicals that come out the back. The land that is used because we all own our own car is considerable and the effect of concreting this land means it is less able to absorb water, more prone to flooding - and all for an expensive piece of hardware that spends 90-95% of it's time sitting doing nothing.

For an increasingly urbanised population it makes little economic sense to actually own a personalised vehicle when you can use a car club. (The situation is different for those in the countryside). Electric cars will handle the environmental impact - but combine that with autonomous cars and they will be able to handle refuelling.

Tesla have done a lot of work on battery life - such that batteries will be able to last. Not only that but things like the GigaFactory will see the price go down (it is a basic rule of economics that increase the supply and you reduce the price). They have also worked to reduce the cost.

I can see car companies moving away from selling cars to having their own car clubs - where you will not own a car, but pay a subscription to have a car arrive on demand.

But while technology changes fast - cultures change slowly. But there are many competing demands that will effect how this happens. As less people own cars then so the price will come down and with governmental pressure to avoid supply of petrol cars these will have to be electric. This in turn will increase the incentive for car companies to reduce the price of electric and not to produce petrol cars - but this will be slowed down because demand for all vehicles will reduce.

So a governmental plan to phase out petrol cars would be a sensible policy, but will take 10-20 years to come to fruition.

You forget that currently cars are a huge cash cow for the Government. Take away road tax and diesel and petrol costs, where do you think the money will come from to replace it?

Thank you for a great post and understanding what Corbyn was saying rather than the media using it as another angle to bash him. There seems no doubt that thousands are dying early as a result of air pollution in cities and the technology is there to aleviate this. Perhaps if we started ensuring more park and ride for towns and cities with all buses being electric.

You have to start somewhere and the article highlights 2026 if implemented now, the writer knows that would be impossible because even if we have an early election it won't happen before Brexit negotiations are complete and even if miraculously Labour did win then a bill would have to go through parliament and would take probably the full term if pushed through so the earliest would be 2032 not 2026.

Had proper scientific research been carried out and more importantly acknowledged and implemented around deisel and instead of years of encouraging people to buy deisel cars and use deisel for the majority of our haulage, perhaps we would be further down the road in addressing the problems of air pollution instead of decades of worsening it.

You have to address these problems now not let another generation suffer the consequences of non action.

With regard to the energy companies is there anyone here or in any other forum thinks that he is wrong?

Road tax can be adjusted and fuel duty could easily be transferred to electric.