Car industry leaders have condemned Rishi Sunak’s plan to row back on the government’s net zero policies and delay its ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles as “incredibly confusing” and “hugely retrograde”.

The prime minister is expected to announce on Friday that he will postpone several policies that he says would impose a direct cost on consumers, including the planned phase-out of gas boilers and the introduction of energy-efficiency targets for private rented homes.

The chair of Ford UK said that if Britain were to relax its plan to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2030, it would undermine the steps the US car manufacturer had taken to prepare for the change.

“Our business needs three things from the UK government: ambition, commitment and consistency. A relaxation of 2030 would undermine all three,” Lisa Brankin said.

She added: “We need the policy focus trained on bolstering the EV market in the short-term and supporting consumers while headwinds are strong.”

Ian Plummer, the commercial director at the online vehicle marketplace AutoTrader, said the expected five-year delay on the ban, to 2035, was a “hugely retrograde step”.

“This U-turn will cause a huge headache for manufacturers, who are crying out for clarity and consistency, and it is hardly going to encourage the vast majority of drivers who are yet to buy an electric car to make the switch,” he said.

He accused the prime minister of taking “the easy option with one eye on polling day” rather than using the tax system to ease consumer concerns over the affordability of electric vehicles.

Mike Hawes, the chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said pushing back the ban on sales of new internal combustion engine vehicles from 2030 was “a concern”.

“The industry has and continues to invest billions of pounds into these new technologies, electrified vehicles, battery vehicles, both abroad and here in the UK,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “The government has backed the industry with investments into Tata’s battery plant in Somerset, Cowley for BMW, so we are questioning what is the strategy here, because we need to shift the mobility of road transport away from fossil fuels towards sustainable transport. We don’t quite know what’s going to happen now.”

He said carmakers believed they would still be required to sell increasing numbers of battery electric vehicles from the start of next year as part of a “zero emission vehicle mandate”. By 2030, 80% of the cars sold by the auto industry will be expected to be battery electric vehicles.

Hawes said: “I think that’s still going ahead. We are trying to understand what is going to happen next between this sort of statement and that policy, and the message it sends consumers, which must be incredibly confusing.”

The left-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank said rolling back on net zero policies would “put Rishi Sunak on the wrong side of the public, the economics, and history”.

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Luke Murphy, an associate director at IPPR, said the move would be “bad for consumers who will benefit from a faster transition to net zero, as these proposals will make us all more reliant on volatile, expensive, imported fossil fuels”.

He called the race to net zero “the economic opportunity of the 21st century”, adding that investors needed “stability and certainty”.

Murphy said: “What is the point of investing half a billion pounds of public money in an electric battery factory only to abandon the petrol and diesel phase-out?”

The British car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover said it welcomed any certainty around climate policy, adding that its own plans were “on track”.

A spokesperson for the company, owned by Tata Motors, said: “We welcome certainty around legislation for the end of sale of petrol and diesel powered cars.”