> Very little coverage of this bill passing in the UK mainstream media that I have seen.
because there's no opposition to it. everyone wants these rules. the opposition wants them strengthened for example. since there's no discord, there's really no news.
Delaying the 2030 ICE ban was inevitable. Moving it to 2035 puts it in line with the EU.
(But it'll probably get delayed again. You can't just price the poor off the roads nationwide and expect the economy not to nosedive. As well as charging options for people without large detached homes with private driveways/garages, we need affordable used EVs, and we need to be sure thet battery packs in those older vehicles won't be utterly worthless)
The poor don't buy new cars, which this ban affects. They buy second hand cars, which would only slowly be removed from the market as new ones were not entering. Indeed, old ICE cars would automatically stick around longer if electric cars were too expensive. This was not a big bang approach.
The question is whether there will ever be an affordable used market for EVs (comparable with the used ICE vehicle market), due to the high price of new vehicles combined with battery degradation.
Will EVs have the multi-decade lifespan of a well-maintained ICE vehicle, or will they be on the scrapheap much sooner due to battery longevity issues, or repair-hostile practices as cars move ever further into 'tech product' status, unrepairable without proprietary tools/information/parts.
Meanwhile, the world seems to be getting ever more hostile to personal light EVs (e-scooters/bikes/skateboards)
For one thing mainstream media is exempt from the bill.
It has been there, just not directly. Always ask yourself; what is the deeper unstated reasons why a story is being covered widely by mainstream media?
Lot of truth in that though to be fair the 'page three' tradition (the inclusion of an image of a half-naked female on page 3 of a tabloid newspaper) finally ended in 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_3
Many of the newspapers have campaigned in support of it.
Various major charities have campaigned in support of it.
Polls show the bill has high public support.
That leaves very little room for reasoned criticism of the bill.