It's the cleaner air, stupid
Last weekly edition of The Fast Charge Newsletter
Hello, this is Tom Riley, and welcome to the last weekly edition of The Fast Charge.
In this edition, I discuss the current situation regarding the ZEV mandate review, and my belief, after six years and 285 editions, that we have lost sight of the fact that dirty air is linked to 30,000 annual deaths in the UK.
As I wrote in July, while I am throttling down my weekly output, I still plan to publish features and investigations when I can.
To begin…
It has been a real privilege to be in your inbox each week. Whether you signed up when I launched this newsletter in January 2021, or whether you only joined last month… thank you for reading.
A lot of people become journalists and then go into PR. I like to think I’ve done a good job doing that in reverse. I haven’t always got things right, and I know I’ve made enemies. But I have made far more friends. And I like to think I’ve uncovered some genuine scoops which have led to positive changes, even if it is simply being a thorn in the backsides of PR teams.
As above, I’m not disappearing. There are still so many stories about this transition that I believe have been ignored. Or perhaps have not had the right spotlight shone on them. Topics such as the consumer experience, cost of charging, and accessibility: I am always astounded by how often real people are thought of last during policymaking.
I will do all I can to keep highlighting these stories. Because in all my six years writing this publication, arguably this industry has never been at a more critical junction.
“Not another one”
The decision by Burnham’s government to follow Starmer in bringing forward a review of the Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate is a gut punch.
Businesses are rightfully frustrated about this. More than 40 industry organisations, many representing numerous companies and billions of investment, wrote a letter to the Transport Secretary criticising the idea of a review. Even the Sunday Times’ Oliver Gill wrote that the government needed to stop flip-flopping.
While a consultation is yet to appear… And even though new polling by Savanta found 54% of Labour MPs support the current rules, regrettably, I am not sure it will be enough to cause the government to rethink its decision. The trouble is, all Downing Street will be thinking about is how to guard against Reform and keep the PM’s approval ratings high. Carmakers dominating headlines by announcing factory closures or job losses would not be a good look.
At least with the letters I obtained in July from carmakers to DfT, we know exactly what they will push for. A reduction in targets. An easing of the deadline. A brake on climate goals. And a reversal of confidence in an electrified future. I hope that these letters will help organisations to counter the data points within them.
However, don’t expect the coming battle to be easy. The Information Rights Unit at the Department for Business and Trade told me last week, in response to an FOI request I made in June, that when searching the Business Secretary’s inbox for letters from carmakers about the ZEV mandate in 2026, they found 662 relevant records. In another response, they suggested one minister’s inbox had turned up 2,000 relevant items.
Clearly… I’m certain that those numbers don’t equate to the actual number of letters sent in, as that would be insane. Though it absolutely underlines a solid, concerted effort by carmakers to use every door to get it changed. I will absolutely keep trying to get hold of these letters.
There are clearly problems in parts of the rules. Electric van uptake, for example, despite recent surges, is clearly not on target. I have sympathy on that front with groups advocating for a change, and I have spoken with other pro-EV policymakers who agree. Vans serve a very different customer to cars, and I reckon a review for this segment makes sense.
For cars, though, it’s different. Demand is here. You can see EVs on the streets. In people’s driveways. On the motorway. In supermarket carparks. Registrations for new models are soaring, hitting a record level of demand in July, and second-hand EVs are flying off the forecourts. And the infrastructure is only going to be put in the ground and maintained with more fully electric cars - not plug-in hybrids - coming onto the roads.
We don’t need to lower the UK’s ambition to raise demand. In fact, that makes no sense. There are so many other tiny things that could be done to boost demand. Allocating set bays for on-street charge points, tougher enforcement of the consumer regulations, a positive outcome in the cost of charging review, centralising decisions away from councils (such as around management of pavement charging), and maybe not giving £190m to already wealthy businesses for grid connections they don’t need.
We must keep a high bar for EVs. Not because of the heatwaves. Or rising tides. Or because it pleases people who hug trees and drink oat lattes. No, for me there’s always been one reason…
Dirty air in Britain remains an invisible killer
The UK is an overwhelmingly urban place. Despite all our green and pleasant lands, few of us live in them. Nearly 85% are in cities and towns. And that makes clean air important to have solved yesterday, because 30,000 deaths were linked to air pollution in 2025, according to the Royal College of Physicians. Ignoring the heartache of that statistic, even the most dubious Treasury Scrooge would agree it’s a lot of tax revenue down the drain.
Yes… It’s critical that we can keep the Earth’s temperature down by 2050. But, to me, we must have air we can breathe as soon as possible. And that is what EVs can deliver right now.
When I first started writing this newsletter… It was not about saving polar bears; it’s been about clean air. I can remember long ago reading about Ella Roberta, the nine-year-old girl from South London who died in 2013. She was the first person in the world to have air pollution listed on her death certificate. She’d now be in her early twenties, and we could be about to let polluting vehicles off the hook for even longer. Isn’t that a bit tragic?
Somewhere, I think the clean air message has been lost. In the public’s eye, EVs are associated with the environment, not health. You say ‘EV’ to someone, and then ask them to think of a colour, and they’ll certainly say ‘green’. And green politics has always been a topic that alienates people. Despite today nearly nine in ten (86%) of Britons seeing climate change as at least partially responsible for the heatwaves, support for net zero targets has dropped from 68% to 45% today, according to More in Common. People’s views have been distorted.
While we can criticise the government and carmakers for flip-flopping on their messaging… It’s also true that the EV sector has done that too. First it was all about the environment. Then came clean air. And then it was about better technology. And now it’s about saving money. All of which have been valid and are all still relevant, but it certainly has made communicating about EVs a mixed bag. In many ways, the best thing to happen to the EV brand has been Putin and Trump. Both of their respective wars have caused significant shifts in the attractiveness of electrification and the need for energy independence.
But that ‘carrot’ is only going to take the transition so far. After six years, I believe public health should have a much bigger role in the conversation around EVs. Carbon savings will save lives in the future, but better air will save lives today. I think it’s time to bring public health back into the equation. Maybe it can be a ‘stick’ people understand?
And, on that note…
Thank you for reading. Keep sending me tips. Drop me a WhatsApp. Put up the bat signal when you need it, etc. And assume that I will be sleuthing away in the background. See you very soon with a funny eVED story, and have a good Summer 😎
