[user104658]

Originally Posted by Livia

Fortunately, our old combustion engines won't go to waste... There will be plenty of countries in Asia, Africa, South America who will have neither the economy nor the inclination to cut emissions who'll probably buy them all up. It's a good thing, but we're such a small country I fail to see how this is going to help.

I suppose it'll directly help the inner-cities with cleaner air but, as you say, on a global level there are still going to be more and more combustion engine vehicles year-on-year for the foreseeable future, not to mention air travel, so it'll make very little difference to overall air pollution .

Also, modern cars already run much cleaner anyway... one dirty old van is pumping out ten times or more pollution than a 2017 car using any fuel type. The sensible thing to do would be to start there, with all the old vans / trucks / lorries / buses... get rid of those and our cities will be much cleaner. Betty's 3-door diesel hatchback really isn't doing much.