There is still one country that uses leaded gasoline for personal cars.
For automobiles, the future comes very slowly.
For automobiles, the future comes very slowly.
That was true five years ago, but no longer-Algeria, the last country to allow it, banned leaded petrol in 2021 - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-58388810
AFAICT it would still be legal for the place on the bypass near me to sell leaded fuel but they don't because (a) the market is too small, not worth it and (b) as a result wholesalers don't offer the product, so if they wanted to sell it they can't get it anyway.
This EU directive banned the sale of leaded petrol in the UK on 1 January 2000.
So, was this directive actually implemented by the UK before it left? Or did they go "Eh, we achieved the intended goal anyway, no action" ?
This way the EU doesn't have to worry about weird edge cases where the EU wants to control Foozling of Doodads but it turns out that in Poland ordinary people often Foozle their own Doodad at home and so their approach needs to consider individual citizens who want to Foozle a Doodad, but in Ireland that's crazy and you pay one of a few dozen Registered Doodad Foozlers to do it at scale, requiring a very different regulation to achieve the same goal.
Part III makes it illegal to sell leaded petrol in the UK without a government permit
No idea how many of these permits have been issued
If you read the regulations, they provide for the permits to be issued to members of the Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs, since some classic cars have difficulty running on unleaded petrol. https://www.fbhvc.co.uk/fuels says "the Federation lobbied successfully to secure an EU concession for the sale of leaded petrol in the UK, a concession which survives to this day, although current sales outlets are few in number, and the uptake of the product is quite small. In part, the difficulty of setting up a satisfactory distribution for leaded petrol for the use of historic vehicles, is proof of the general truth that a good distribution system for specialised fuels for historic road vehicles is not a viable commercial proposition". It sounds like there may still be a small handful of isolated places where you can legally purchase small quantities of leaded petrol in the UK for use with classic cars – more likely the clubhouse of a classic car club, or a mechanic who specialises in such vehicles, than an ordinary petrol station.
The regulations also exempt military vehicles, but I'd be surprised if there was any remaining use of leaded petrol in the UK military.
The regulations apply to land transport vehicles, not avgas. Leaded avgas is still legally used in the UK for general aviation, despite repeated attempts to move away from it.
> also exempt military vehicles, but I'd be surprised if there was any remaining use of leaded petrol in the UK military.
Modern tanks are diesels yeah. However the UK has a lot of enthusiasts who own (obsolete and of course also de-fanged) tanks. And I can totally believe some of the archaic designs used leaded petrol. On the other hand, even a brand new production tank is very thirsty so realistically if you aren't trying to do a "Brewster's Millions" you would not actually drive your tank very far.