The British government eased rules on carmakers requiring them to shift toward selling electric vehicles, as officials sought to blunt some of the pain caused by new auto tariffs on foreign cars sold in the United States.
British officials said on Sunday that they would keep the requirement to stop the sale of new gasoline and diesel cars by 2030, but gave carmakers more flexibility to meet annual targets on electric vehicle sales between now and the 2030 deadline, so they could sell more cars in later years when demand is expected to be higher and face lower penalties. Officials also said that hybrid cars could be sold until 2035.
Last month, President Trump announced a 25 percent tariff on imported cars and auto parts, upending the complex supply chains that underpin the global auto industry. The tariffs on cars imported into the United States came into effect last week and a levy on parts is set to begin next month.
“Global trade is being transformed so we must go further and faster in reshaping our economy,” Keir Starmer, Britain’s prime minister, said in a statement.
On Saturday, the British luxury automaker, Jaguar Land Rover, said that it was pausing shipments to the United States this month, as it assessed the altered trading conditions. The United States is the largest single-country export market for British cars, with 6.4 billion pounds ($8.3 billion) worth of vehicles shipped there in 2023. That’s about a tenth of Britain’s overall exports in goods to the United States.
Even before the latest tariffs by the Trump administration, Britain’s car industry was struggling. Last year, car production dropped to its lowest level in seven decades.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, an industry group, welcomed the government’s changes to the electric-vehicle mandate but said that more action was probably needed to increase consumer demand for these cars.
“Industry remains committed to decarbonizing road transport,” Mike Hawes, the chief executive of the group, said in a statement. The targets in the electric vehicle mandate “are incredibly challenging, especially with a paucity of consumer demand and geopolitical upheaval,” he added.
The government also exempted small-volume, high-end manufacturers, such as McLaren and Aston Martin, from the rules. And vans with an internal combustion engine will also be allowed to be sold until 2035, alongside hybrid vans.
So far, the British government has resisted hitting back with retaliatory tariffs on goods it imports from the United States. The Trump administration imposed a “baseline” 10 percent tariff on goods from Britain, but not additional “reciprocal” levies that apply to many other countries. Mr. Starmer has said that he remained “calm” and was working toward negotiating a trade deal with the United States, focused on technology.
But the government was ready to intervene where needed to “shelter British business from the storm,” the prime minister wrote in The Sunday Telegraph.
