After decades of steady evolution, there’s a revolution brewing within the automotive industry. Rapidly tightening regulations, focused on reducing the environmental impact of the way we travel, are fuelling investment in cleaner technologies for future vehicles and that change is the thin end of the wedge for enthusiasts. But there’s still plenty of scope for the modified scene to find its feet in that new world.
AN END TO FOSSIL FUELS
Time is ticking for the combustion engine, at least as we know it. Hybrid will become the bare minimum for new cars and vans sold in the UK from 2030, and sales will be restricted to ‘zero tailpipe emission’ vehicles five years later. That deadline matches the European Union, China, Canada and several of the United States, effectively banning the sale of fossil fuel engines in some of the world’s largest markets by 2035.
Obviously, depending on where you live, this means there’s another 12 years of new petrol and diesel products to buy into. After all, nobody is suggesting that they’ll be banned from use any time soon. But the cogs of change are whirring, and if there’s any certainty over the next decade it’s that modifying new petrol or diesel cars will only become more complicated.
As is often the case, California is leading that change. Since July 2021, cars will fail their smog test if a diagnostic port check shows the
