Volta Trucks To The UK: Bring It On!

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We reported earlier this week that the UK is planning to boot sales of new fossil fuel cars by 2030, which is an accelerated timeline from the original 2017 plan to do so by 2040 and a subsequent February 2020 plan to do so by 2035.

Volta Trucks argues that there’s something lacking, though. The policy is focused on cars and vans, but what about medium-duty and heavy-duty commercial vehicles?

“At Volta Trucks, we welcome today’s announcement by the UK Government to ban the sale of internal combustion engine cars and vans by 2030, and the ambitious plan to implement the world’s second most stringent timeline, after Norway. However, we are disappointed that there is no mention in the proposals for the ban to extend to large commercial vehicles,” says Volta Trucks CEO Rob Fowler. “Legacy internal combustion engine trucks are a disproportionately large contributor to greenhouse gasses and air pollution that’s proven to be a significant contributor to many thousands of premature deaths every year in our major towns and cities, where air quality is at its worst.”

Indeed — anyone who has spent a moment next to a large diesel truck or bus knows that they put out an enormous amount of pollution, and they account for a sizable portion of transportation emissions.

Going on, Fowler adds: “Governments and legislators need to take a holistic approach to the climate change emergency we face and remove all polluting vehicles from our roads. Commercial vehicles form the lifeblood of city centre commerce, so society needs goods vehicles, but it also needs good vehicles: vehicles that are zero emissions. I therefore call on the UK Government to apply the same levels of decarbonisation ambition for commercial vehicles as has been announced today with passenger cars and vans. As a company that is founded on the principle of accelerating change, the transition away from fossil fuels cannot come soon enough, to improve the air quality and environment for all of us.”

That’s a strong argument. CleanTechnica concurs.


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Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

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