Motor Trader The award-winning and longest running UK magazine for car retailing professionals. Your first stop for News, Jobs and Reports for the motor industry.
The SMMT has called on the government to move faster to agreeing a transition period for Brexit or risk undermining the UK automotive industry’s competitiveness.
The call came from SMMT president Tony Walker at the trade body’s annual dinner in London.
Addressing more than 1,100 industry leaders, government representatives and other stakeholders, Walker said that while the prime minister has embraced the need for a period of transition to avoid a post-Brexit cliff edge, “we need to see concrete progress – and quickly.”
“This transition should be on the current terms and, crucially, not time-limited to give industry time to adjust and secure long-term investment decisions. We will never stop striving to be competitive. But we ask government to help provide the conditions in which we can compete. Like every other industry, we need certainty now.”
“After all the difficulties we have overcome, all the changes we have made and the innovations we have brought, we do not need trade barriers to be our next challenge. We are an industry with the character to overcome major obstacles. And we are working hard to maintain our competitiveness. But don’t test our character unnecessarily. In the last forty years we have succeeded. We have torn down so many barriers. Please don’t allow new ones to be erected.”
Walker also addressed the issue of air quality and the automotive sector’s ongoing efforts to invest in new technology and improve air quality.
“We have invested billions of pounds in clean, low emission technologies. Leading change by electrifying the market through the introduction of hybrids, plug-in hybrids, battery electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel cell cars. The internal combustion engine is not dead – it is the path to a cleaner and greener future. Banning diesel and petrol cars might be a sound bite that works but it’s not a policy that works. If you ban them you disrupt the new car market and you hamper investment in the electric, emission-free vehicles of tomorrow. You set the future back.”
“The automotive sector has been keen to highlight that the latest Euro 6 vehicles bring significant benefits in terms of low emissions and meeting our climate change targets, and these newer, cleaner vehicles should not be unfairly penalised in government plans.”