Volvo Car UK managing director Nicole Melillo Shaw had already signalled her support for an early review of the ZEV mandate just a day before the Government formally launched one – underlining how widely the move had been anticipated across the industry.

Speaking to Fleet World on 13 August, Melillo Shaw argued that consumer confidence, not the direction of travel, was what needed fixing – comments that came a day ahead of the Department for Transport opening a consultation on 14 August, a step that followed months of industry calls for a rethink and came as no surprise to those close to the sector.

The consultation invites manufacturers, dealers, charge point operators and consumers to submit views by 23 October on whether annual EV sales targets between 2027 and 2035 remain appropriate. The 2030 phase-out of new petrol and diesel cars, and the 2035 zero-emission deadline, remain unchanged.

Melillo Shaw described the current new car market as “completely crazy”, with a shrinking pie divided between more brands than ever before – a dynamic that includes intensifying competition from Chinese manufacturers.

Asked whether it had become harder to sell to fleets given that wider competition, Melillo Shaw said fleet was not a special case within the business, but acknowledged the market backdrop had toughened.

“I wouldn’t say fleet particularly stands out,” she said. “Obviously, with us being in the direct [sales] model, our priority is making sure that we have a decent share of retail and a decent share of fleet. We’ve been able to deliver that, which is why we’re 4% up so far this year – but I would say, while we are getting the results we want, it’s definitely harder.”

Speaking the day before the review was confirmed, Melillo Shaw made clear Volvo would welcome it, alongside a more fundamental call for greater policy stability going forward.

“With our electrification goals, it’s absolutely what we want to see – a push towards fully electric,” she said. “I think we have to be honest about the fact the uptake hasn’t gone the way we wanted it to.”

She argued that a stream of incremental changes to incentives and regulation – some positive, some less so – was itself contributing to slower adoption, by unsettling consumer confidence.

“There’s lots of positive things here, and then maybe something being taken away there, which means it’s quite confusing. And as soon as you add any confusion to consumers, they just go, ‘oh, I won’t do anything for the moment’. It stalls people’s purchases.”

Volvo is on course for around 23% of its UK sales to be fully electric this year, with plug-in hybrids adding further to that total. Melillo Shaw said that record left the carmaker well placed whatever the review concludes.

“Coming from a brand that supports the direction, we’re in a good place,” she said, while stressing the need for realism about the pace of the transition and the cost of propping up demand artificially. “If we’re only hitting the numbers through discounting, that’s obviously very costly to the industry.”

She was direct on where responsibility lay for the pace of change so far. “If consumers tomorrow all wanted to move to electric, we’d be ready to go. It’s certainly not from our side that consumers haven’t been doing that. But because the appetite hasn’t quite been there…” Without policy stability, she suggested, “the only way to get people into cars is to do it through discounts, which cost billions, and that has wider impacts.”

Melillo Shaw suggested some of the original adoption targets may, with hindsight, have been “slightly arbitrary”, adding “now we’re living the reality of that”. She reiterated that mixed signals – a discounted car alongside a new tax introduced elsewhere (referring to the new pay-per-mile eVED due in 2028) – simply add to consumer confusion. “The proposition has to be clear,” she said, pointing to Volvo’s strategy of pricing electric models in line with equivalent hybrids to make switching easier.

On what matters most to EV buyers today, Melillo Shaw was clear that the conversation has moved on from range anxiety to charging speed, as battery ranges have climbed and buyer expectations have shifted with them.

“We’re slowly approaching a plateau in terms of what people are willing to pay for the range they get, relative to the size of car,” she said. “I’d definitely say charging speed, because range was – back in the day, when we had plug-in hybrids doing 20 miles electric – a case of ‘can you do the school run?’ As electric cars have got better and better, and most people think they drive further than they actually do, that’s less of an issue day to day.”

The bigger question now, she said, arises on longer trips: “When you start talking three, four, five hundred miles, it becomes: ‘I don’t know how much I’ll need, but that sounds fine.’ Then the conversation comes: ‘what if I’m on my journey and I need to charge?’ I think that’s the bit we’re in now.”