News
European Car Industry is On The Brick Of Collapse If CO2 Emissions Are Not Eased
Germany and Italy have joined the European car industry’s call for the European Union to ease CO2 reduction targets for cars and review a 2035 ban on the sale of cars with internal combustion engines.
Italian Industry Minister Adolfo Urso said on Wednesday ahead of a meeting of EU ministers responsible for the internal market and industry that his country, along with Germany, was working to support other countries in calling for the easing of CO2 emission standards for cars.
As reported by the Euronews portal, they will also request a review of the EU’s announcement that in 2035, they will ban the sale of cars with gasoline and diesel engines.
Urso echoed recent warnings from carmakers, predicting that the European car industry will “collapse” and “tens of thousands” of jobs will be at risk if the EU does not change course.
Urso’s warnings come three months after Italian Prime Minister Meloni called the ban on the sale of cars with SUS engines “ideological madness”.
A few days ago, the European Association of Automobile Manufacturers (ACEA) publicly called for the postponement of the application of stricter emission limits after the publication of data on the decline in sales of electric cars.
The influential Brussels-based group, which includes BMW, Ford, Renault, Volkswagen and Volvo, warned on August 19 that new car registrations fell below 644,000 in August, a drop of more than 18 percent compared to the same month in 2023. . year.
The largest proportional decline was recorded in electric cars, whose market share fell by almost a third from last year’s 21 percent.
“We lack the key conditions to achieve the necessary momentum in the production of zero-emission vehicles: charging infrastructure, including hydrogen, a competitive production environment, affordable green energy, purchase and tax incentives, and a secure supply of raw materials, hydrogen and batteries,” wrote ACEA- and.
Currently, car manufacturers must ensure that the emissions of all cars they sell in a given year do not exceed an average of 115.1 grams per kilometre, and that limit will be tightened to 93.6 grams next year. That number will be increasingly difficult to achieve with the decline in sales of electric vehicles on the one hand and the dominance of larger SUV models.
Faced with the threat of multibillion-euro fines next year, ACEA has called on the EU to implement “urgent relief measures”, but according to Euronews, the European Commission believes that the industry itself is at least partly to blame for the situation.
“We still have 15 months of car sales ahead of us and the industry has time … to reach its targets,” a European Commission spokesman told reporters on Tuesday. “It is also important to remember that the 2025 target was agreed in 2019 and … we have designed these policies to give the industry time to adjust,” the spokesman added.
