Hello and welcome to a special episode of Spectator Sounds. I'm Kate Andrews. The government

has set out a phase removal of petrol and diesel cars to usher in a new age of electric vehicles.

Sales of the formal will be banned from 2030.

To what extent will electric cars help improve the environment and reduce our carbon footprint?

Is the infrastructure in place to manage this transition? And it's the consumer demand there.

Joining me today to discuss all this and more are Mike Haas, CEO of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, Grant Shaps, the Transport Secretary, and Chris O'Shea, the CEO of Centrica. This podcast is kindly sponsored by Centrica. I'll start with the Transport Secretary. Last November, the UK announced the end of petrol and diesel car sales by 2030. Hybrids get an

extension until 2035. This was a decision clearly made to move towards electric vehicles. It's

something you've been an advocate of for a long time. What do you see as the benefits of this move?

Well, I drive an electric vehicle, so I kind of know the benefits straight off the bat. They're delightful to drive, but it is a slightly different mentality. I describe it more as like having a mobile phone. You'd never leave your house without your mobile phone fully charged for the day, and you kind of need to think about an electric vehicle in similar terms. You kind of want to get it charged primarily overnight and then be able to sort of set off. And a lot of times people say,

and this is probably slightly more sort of kind of theoretical part of the discussion, but a lot

times people say, aren't you worried about sort of running out of power? And I point out to

them, like, do you live in a petrol station?

And they'll look at me like, no, of course I don't live in a petrol station. Well, I basically

do with an electric car. It's like I live in a charging station because I can charge it up

overnight and drive it off. So why should I feel any anxiety about it? So there is a difference in approach and I carried all of

that with me to the decision that we made last year on ending the sale of petrol and diesel by 2030

because we all know it's going to happen anyway. We've been discussing it for years. We know that

there will be some advantages as well as some challenges in being the

first movers in this. But by being the first country in the world to have legislated for zero

carbon by 2050, it seemed to me to be fitting to also be the first major economy to legislate for

2030 to end the sale of petrol and diesel and 2035 for the end of the

low-carbon hybrids. So that was sort of what was going through my mind, if you want to know,

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