For several years, the UK government has been planning to ban the sale of brand new petrol and diesel cars, in order to facilitate the mass switchover to electric cars. However, the plans for the precise way that this would be done, and to what timescale, have changed several times over the last few years, leaving many of us confused over exactly when new combustion-engined cars will disappear from sale. Well, wonder no more, as our handy guide explains all about what the latest plans - announced in April 2025 - are.
But in any case, be assured that reports of the combustion engine’s demise are also greatly exaggerated, with many petrol and diesel vehicles likely to remain on the roads for years or even decades to come, long after any petrol or diesel car ban is introduced.
It all started in 2017, when the government announced plans for a ban that would originally have come into force in 2040. The idea behind it was primarily to address air pollution, due to vehicle exhaust fumes. A year before that, a report from the Royal College of Physicians concluded that air pollution was claiming 40,000 lives a year in Britain, and MPs declared a public health emergency.
The UK's policy initially mirrored that of the EU, but in March 2023, the EU agreed to allow new vehicles running on synthetic fuels – also known as eFuels – that are effectively carbon neutral to remain on sale beyond 2030. So far, the UK government is not set to follow suit. The EU is also set to permit the sale of petrol-engined and diesel-engined vehicles for small volume car makers that produce fewer than 1,000 units per year.
When Will Petrol and Diesel Cars be Banned? What You Need to Know:
- The Causes of Air Pollution and CO2 Emissions
- The Target for Net Zero Carbon Emissions
- When Will Diesel Cars be Banned?
- When Will Petrol Cars be Banned?
- Will Hybrid Cars be Banned?
- Will I Still be Able to Buy a Petrol or Diesel Car After the Ban?
- When Will I Have to Sell my Petrol or Diesel Car?
The Causes of Air Pollution and CO2 Emissions
Vehicles are by no means the only source of air pollution. And for that matter, banning petrol and diesel cars doesn’t solve the air quality issue completely, as electric cars give off a significant amount of dust particles from their brakes and tyres. Nonetheless, it should dramatically reduce the production of nitrogen dioxide, a gas given off by both petrol and diesel engines that can cause damage to people’s lungs and worsen the effects of respiratory conditions such as asthma.
Phasing out petrol and diesel cars should also help to reduce long-term CO2 emissions. Although there’s still a carbon cost associated with building electric cars, they don’t produce any tailpipe emissions, so their overall footprint is lower, especially if they’re run on electricity from renewable sources.
The Target for Net Zero Carbon Emissions
In the run up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (known as COP26) in November 2021, the then prime minister Boris Johnson announced a 10-point plan to help Britain achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. As part of what he termed the Green Industrial Revolution, the ban on new petrol and diesel car sales would be brought forward to 2030. He also announced that the sale of new hybrid cars would be banned from 2035 (we’ll take a closer look at exactly what this means further on in the guide). Then, in September 2023, Johnson's successor, Rishi Sunak, announced that the ban on new petrol and diesel cars would be delayed until 2035. When the Tories were replaced by a new Labour government in 2024, led by Sir Kier Starmer, it was unclear for several months whether or not these plans would change again. However, following a consultation by the Department for Transport on the plans, which ran from December 2024 to February 2025, the latest set of plans were announced in April 2025. The main headlines of these plans are that the sale of brand new petrol and diesel cars will be banned from 2030, whereas hybrid cars will be allowed to remain on sale until 2035.
All this builds on existing efforts to reduce the use of fossil fuels. As far back as 2012, car-makers across the EU (including the UK, at the time) agreed to a series of targets that would progressively reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of their vehicles. Although this scheme didn’t explicitly seek to ban petrol or diesel, the targets that it set provided a clear incentive for automotive manufacturers to begin moving towards zero-emissions vehicles.
Fast-forward to the present day, and electric cars are becoming more popular than ever. But many of us still use petrol or diesel, and the clock is ticking. So where does that leave us? Read on to find out.
When Will Diesel Cars be Banned?
The sale of new diesel cars is set to be banned in 2030. Some may receive a brief stay of execution if they use a diesel engine as part of a hybrid system, but these will be phased out in time as well (see the hybrid section below).
In some respects, this could be an unfortunate end for what was once the UK’s most popular type of engine. Diesel cars typically emit less CO2 and offer better fuel economy than their petrol-powered counterparts.
Although they’ve historically been worse for air quality emissions, such as nitrogen dioxide, many diesels now emit similar levels to the equivalent petrol engines. They also tend to perform best under circumstances where hybrid and electric vehicles offer less benefit. such as long motorway journeys, where some diesel cars can cover more than 1,000 miles between fill-ups.
When Will Petrol Cars be Banned?
As with diesels, the sale of new petrol cars will be banned in 2030. This comes with the same caveat that some hybrid models – with a petrol engine allied to an electric motor – will remain on sale for a further five years.
For the car manufacturers, it’s not quite as simple as flicking a switch at the end of the decade. Since 2024, carmakers have been required by the government's Zero Emissions Vehicles (ZEV) mandate to ensure that a certain percentage of their new car sales are EVs: the target was 22% in 2024, rising to 28% in 2025, and rising incrementally in the following years of the mandate. Carmakers face fines if the targets aren't met, and some were struggling to meet the targets as demand for EVs didn't rise as sharply as expected in the early days of the mandate. However, the Labour government announced in 2025 that carmakers would be given the option to balance these annual targets against one another by selling a higher proportion of EVs in the later years of the mandate when demand has increased, easing economic pressure on manufacturers.
The key thing to bear in mind with all types of cars, however, is that these rules would only apply to new car sales. Petrol, diesel and hybrid vehicles that roll off the forecourt before the cut-off dates will not be affected.
Will Hybrid Cars be Banned?
The simple answer is yes, the sale of new hybrid cars will be banned, but not until 2035. Nevertheless, this remains one of the most confusing parts of the proposed legislation.
For a start, the term hybrid covers a wide range of options. Many petrol and diesel models now come with a degree of ‘mild’ hybridisation that helps to reduce the load on the engine. In many cases, these aren’t even marketed as hybrids, because the impact they have on the engine is so small, and they’re not generally capable of running on electricity alone.
At the other end of the scale, there are plug-in hybrids (otherwise known as PHEVs). These have larger batteries that can be plugged into an external charger, similar to those on a fully electric vehicle. As a result, many of these cars can travel significant distances without using their petrol or diesel engine at all: upwards of 40 miles on a single charge is increasingly common.
In between sit self-charging hybrids. Unlike mild hybrids, these can travel short distances on electric power alone, but with much smaller batteries that plug-in hybrids, we're talking a mile or two at a time, rather than dozens. These hybrids don't have to be plugged in, and simply recharge their small batteries by recycling kinetic engergy through their brakes.
Under the government's latest policy, mild hybrids will not be classed as hybrids, and sales will cease in 2030 alongside those of petrol and diesel, while self-charging hybrids and plug-in hybrids will continue to be sold until 2035.
Will I Still be Able to Buy a Petrol or Diesel Car After the Ban?
When it comes to second-hand cars, the answer is a resounding yes. The ban on petrol and diesel cars in 2030 will only affect the sale of brand new cars.
For most new car buyers, the only option will then be an electric car. However, high-end sports car manufacturers in Germany and Italy successfully lobbied for an exemption within the EU for new models that run exclusively on low-carbon synthetic fuel, and manufacturers producing fewer than 1,000 cars per year are also exempt.
In the UK, cars that run on synthetic fuel will not continue to be sold beyond 2030, but manufacturers that sell fewer than 2,500 cars in the UK will be exempt from the petrol/diesel ban until 2035.
When Will I Have to Sell my Petrol or Diesel Car?
Existing cars won’t be affected by the ban, which only applies to brand new petrol and diesel sales, so it’s unlikely that you will ever be forced to part with your pride and joy. However, it’s possible that the running costs of fossil-fuelled cars may go up due to taxation and the increasing use of low-emissions zones (especially in major cities, such as the London ULEZ charge).
What exactly will happen to the used car market is harder to predict. Not so long ago, we were seeing the demand for electric cars threatening to outstrip supply. However, by the middle of 2023 this had ceased to be the case, with an excess of supply contributing to sharply falling EV prices.
There are also big questions over how many motorists will be realistically able to run an electric car. Although their running costs are lower, electric cars tend to cost significantly more than equivalent petrol or diesel models to purchase, and the incentives to buy one have been scaled back in recent years. The public charging infrastructure is also quite patchy in some areas, with chargers often hard to find or out of action.
The government has vowed to address these issues with a tenfold increase in the number of electric charging points, but critics claim that this won’t go far enough. It’s likely that certain buyers will be keen to continue running petrol or diesel cars for as long as possible, and some may even be prepared to pay a premium to do so.
That’s particularly true for classic car owners and other enthusiasts. The good news here is that the UK has traditionally been one of the most accommodating countries in the world towards those that want to run old or unusual vehicles. It’s reasonable to assume that this trend will continue.
Will I Still be Able to Buy Petrol and Diesel After the Ban?
Absolutely. The average age of a car on UK roads is 8.4 years, which means the typical family runaround in 2030 will likely still run on petrol or diesel.
Although the percentage of cars running on petrol and diesel is set to go down, the overall number of vehicles is likely to keep going up for the foreseeable future. As a result, it's even possible that the sale of petrol will continue to rise until at least 2030 before gradually going down.
Whatever the long term future holds, the government, the motor trade and the fuel companies will have to support those who continue running petrol and diesel cars into the 2030s, and potentially well beyond that.
