10:50 am, November 3, 2025
The UK car industry will face a ‘crunch’ year in 2026 as it tries to meet ‘wholly unrealistic’ electric car targets, potentially threatening the supply of new petrol and diesel cars, the boss of Vertu Motors has said.
Speaking on the Nick Ferrari Show on LBC radio recently, Vertu Motors CEO Robert Forrester warned that the government’s ZEV mandate is putting ‘immense pressure’ on every level of the industry, from parts suppliers to retailers.
‘We’re in the middle of a vice of taxation and regulation – there are numerous taxes and they’re going up on cars, and we’ve got an electrification agenda where the government is setting wholly unrealistic targets to move the new car and van markets to battery electric vehicles,’ he said.
Forrester added: ‘The targets are completely unrealistic. They are putting an immense amount of pressure on the whole automotive sector – from parts providers to car factories to retailers, and there’s going to be a crunch. It’s going to come next year when we’ll see a rationing of petrol and diesel cars.’
Explaining why the targets are unrealistic, the dealership group chief said: ‘The target for next year is that 33% of all new cars sold in the UK will have to be fully battery electric vehicles.
‘The current run rate is about 23%. We are a country mile away from getting to 33%, and no one in the industry can see a way of getting there.’
He cautioned that the government’s electrification agenda, though well intentioned, risks creating market chaos.
‘We’ll probably see manufacturers holding back supply to avoid huge fines for missing targets,’ he said.
‘We saw it last year – people could see the [petrol/diesel] car on the forecourt, but we weren’t allowed to actually deliver the cars.
‘We’ll see that again next year, and we’ll see real problems for the manufacturers in trying to make money, because they’re having to discount battery electric vehicles to an unending degree.’
Under the ZEV mandate, carmakers face fines of £12,000 per vehicle if they miss their EV sales quota — reduced from £15,000 last year. But Forrester said this still puts them in an impossible position.
‘If you’re faced with a fine of £12,000 or not selling a car, and you don’t make £12,000 as a manufacturer, you probably won’t sell the car,’ he explained. ‘So we’ll see holding back on supply of petrol and diesel cars to try and get to these percentages.’
The motor trade employs nearly a million people in the UK, and he said the pressure could be devastating.
‘Last year, we saw the lowest level of car sales to private customers for 25 years — we sold fewer cars than we did during Covid, when we were closed,’ he said. ‘Next year could be worse if these targets depress the market further.’
Forrester called for a more realistic approach, suggesting the UK should follow Europe’s slower timeline.
‘The Europeans have got this more right than we have,’ he said. ‘They’re looking at 2035 but in consultation with manufacturers to move that further out.
‘If this was left to a free market, we would all end up with electric vehicles within 15 years. This is just a question of speed and not destroying swathes of the industry in the meantime.’
He also urged the chancellor to deliver a ‘worry-free’ Autumn Budget, free of shocks for business.
‘I’d like a budget that I don’t have to care about – a budget that I am not worried about what’s in it, and customers aren’t worried about what’s in it,’ he said. ‘The country needs economic growth — and right now, it doesn’t look like it’s going to get it.’
