UK to BAN sales of petrol and diesel cars by 2040 – and you’ll pay with Road Charging.

The UK government has followed France’s lead by declaring the sales of petrol and diesel cars will be banned by 2040. Expect road charging before.

It’s easy enough for governments to declare what will happen in a generation – after all, it won’t be their problem by then – so take the UK government’s declaration that sales of all petrol and diesel cars will be banned by 2040 with a pinch of salt.

A chunk of the problem of air pollution has to be pout down to the previous nonsensical push for car buyers to jump in to dirty diesels – low CO2, but big NOx – and to car makers scamming ineffective emissions standards with software, allowing the levels of NOx, in particular, to be massively higher in the real world.

But it’s a bit of an odd decision to come out with a ban, when market forces – and taxpayer incentives – would probably have meant ICE cars falling in to the ‘hobby’ category by 2040 anyway – just as horses did when cars arrived.

The big strains will be on producing electricity in volume – especially for peak charging times – which is any cleaner than running ICE cars, and creating an infrastructure suitable for the volume of new EVs.

It will also mean VED disappearing – probably long before 2040 – to be replaced by the compulsory fitting of a ‘Big Brother Black Box’ which will measure how far you drive, when you do it and what type of car you’re driving – and help itself to your credit card every month to pay for it.

In the meantime, diesel cars will be targeted for being dirty, with councils allowed to charge for using them in high road pollution areas after 2020.

Of course, this grabs headlines as cars affect pretty much all of us. But cars account for only a small part of man-made emissions. So what else will be targeted?