Have we reached the end of the road for petrol cars?

The prime minister has said that all new sales of vehicles with internal combustion engines will be banned from 2035. Is that achievable?

What has happened?

Last week Boris Johnson shocked the motor industry by announcing a ban on sales of new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars (including plug-in hybrids) from 2035, rather than 2040 as previously announced. From then, new cars must be fully electric or hydrogen-powered (though you will still be able to drive existing petrol and diesel vehicles, and buy them second-hand).

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.