California-based electric vehicle and clean energy company, Tesla, has reportedly lobbied the government of UK to raise taxes on diesel and petrol cars so as to finance bigger subsidies for electric vehicles, adjacent to a ban on hybrids.
The company called for an escalation in fuel duty in addition to a charge on diesel and petrol car purchases to pay for tax breaks, like VAT exemption, and grants for battery-powered cars, as per submissions to the government.
For the record, the Chief Executive of Tesla, Elon Musk, has effectively pioneered mass production of electric vehicles, intending to address carbon emissions from transport, even though the company’s $1.5 billion purchase in bitcoin has been condemned by some environmental campaigners due to high energy usage of the cryptocurrency.
Back in July 2020, Tesla wrote in a submission that supporting the vehicle uptake of zero emissions by means of mechanisms for making new fossil-fueled cars pay for the damage caused by them is completely logical and reasonable. The company has further added that the result could be a revenue-neutral system for the government.
According to sources, Tesla’s views regarding the ban on fossil fuels set it at odds with several of its rivals in the car manufacturing industry. These competitors have intensely lobbied against government proposals to ban all diesel and petrol cars, which also included hybrids, by 2030. In November 2020, the UK government had stated that hybrids would be permitted till 2035, which came as a relief to numerous conventional carmakers that still earn huge profits from fossil fuel engines.
As per an additional argument by Tesla, car makers should be forced to sell a fixed proportion of zero-emission vehicles under the “zero-emissions mandate”, akin to the organization’s home state of California. Other proposals comprised tax breaks for corporate car users, payment to people for switching away from older polluting vehicles, and a “charging promise” that the authorities would proceed with the installation of chargers on any street in the United Kingdom when requested.
Source credit: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/16/elon-musk-tesla-lobbied-uk-to-raise-tax-on-petrol-and-diesel
