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The Department for Transport's review of the ZEV mandate closed for responses at 11:59pm on Thursday 23 October 2026, after ten weeks. The mandate sets the share of each manufacturer's new car and van registrations in the UK that must be zero emission each year. Today that share rises to 80% of new cars and 70% of new vans in 2030. The consultation, run with the Scottish and Welsh governments and Northern Ireland's Department for Infrastructure, asks which of four options to take for 2030:
- Cars: 80% (no change, with extra flexibilities to 2034), 70%, 60%, 50%.
- Vans: 70% (no change, with extra flexibilities to 2034), 60%, 50%, 40%.
Every option keeps the end of new cars that rely solely on petrol or diesel engines in 2030 and 100% zero emission new cars and vans in 2035. The document names no preferred option. It says zero emission vans made up 10.1% of new van registrations from January to June 2026, up from 8.3% a year earlier.
As Lucy King reported for Energy Live News, a coalition of health, transport and climate groups including WWF, Greenpeace and the British Heart Foundation Cymru warned that weakening the mandate would be "an unnecessary act of economic self-harm".
ما يعنيه ذلك لشركتكم
Nothing changes in what you report. The mandate is a rule for manufacturers. Whatever the outcome, your company cars and vans are still Scope 1 if you own or lease them and run them on fuel, Scope 2 if they are electric and you charge them, and the government publishes the factors for both each year.
It may change what's on offer and at what price. Lower targets would take some pressure off manufacturers to push electric models, while keeping the targets would mean more of them. If you plan to replace vans or company cars in the next few years, the decision is worth watching, but it is not a reason to change the sums.
The carbon case for switching stays the same. Take one average diesel van doing 20,000 miles a year. On the 2026 government factors it produces 0.41386 kg CO2e a mile, or 8.28 tonnes a year. The same miles in an average battery electric van come to 0.07536 kg a mile including grid losses, or 1.51 tonnes: about 82% less. That gap comes from the vehicles and the grid, not from the mandate. Our post on switching company cars to electric works through the same sums for cars.
ما الذي يجب فعله الآن
- Record your vehicles by fuel type, with litres where you have fuel cards and miles where you don't, so you can see what each one emits.
- Note replacement dates for each van and car. That is when the choice between diesel and electric actually comes up.
- Watch for the government's response on gov.uk. We will report the decision when it is published.
