The ASA said it welcomed BMW’s assurances that such claims would not reoccur in the future. (representative)

Britain’s advertising watchdog ruled on Wednesday that BMW and MG Motor cannot claim their electric cars are “zero emissions” because of the environmental impact of their manufacturing and power generation.

“We understand that electric vehicles produce no emissions when driving,” the Advertising Standards Authority wrote of a BMW Google ad seen in August 2023.

“However, emissions can also occur in other circumstances, such as when National Grid electricity is used to manufacture or charge electric vehicles,” the ASA said.

The German manufacturer said it inserted the “zero-emission cars” tag because of Google’s automatic keyword feature.

“We welcome BMW’s assurances that such claims will not reoccur in the future,” the ASA said.

The second decision was made after seeing an advert on Google last August for Chinese-owned British carmaker MG Motor, which claimed its models were “zero-emission”.

“The advert makes a claim of ‘zero emissions’ but fails to provide important information for consumers to understand the basis for this,” the ASA said. “The advert must not reappear in its current form.”

Colin Walker, head of transport at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said the decisions were “very strange” given the government’s efforts to promote electric vehicles.

“It is accepted practice that vehicles of all fuel types are assessed based on the carbon dioxide emitted from their tailpipes,” he said.

“It seems counterintuitive that car manufacturers, working hard to meet the zero-emission vehicle sales targets set under this mandate, are being told that they cannot sell those vehicles as zero-emission,” he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)