Ursula von der Leyen, chairwoman of the European Commission, has announced a willingness to weaken existing emission standards. Manufacturers would not be required to meet performance targets (or pay penalties) as early as 2025, they would have three years to match CAFE 2025 targets. The settlement would come in 2028. The European Commission’s proposal must be agreed to by European governments.
EC: Manufacturers now can sell combustion cars, but later they should promise us that things will get better
The Strategic Dialogue with automakers is about to end. The European Commission has succumbed to the argumentation, having been persuaded that weakening emission standards is a sign of pragmatism. Therefore, there will be an amendment to the current regulations, under which the settlement of the concerns’ emissions will take place not in 2026 for 2025, not in 2027 for 2026, etc., but only in 2028 for the 2025-2027 interval. The targets remain the old way, the companies selling mainly combustion cars get a bit of relief, but in the next years they will have to accelerate with electrification, otherwise they will pay gigantic fines (source).
The year 2035 as the end of the sale of new combustion cars will be subject to a “review,” the ban is to include “full technological neutrality.” The aforementioned changes do not automatically enter into force, they must be approved by the European Parliament and the Council, representatives of the governments of member countries.
In addition, von der Leyen is calling for a push toward the development of software and hardware platforms for autonomous driving. Under the umbrella of the European Union, a supra-national alliance is to be formed to work on chipsets, software, and autonomy technologies, and officials also want to see to it that an appropriate legal framework is put in place to implement the new solutions. Today, the latter aspect is managed entirely by the UNECE, and the Union is adopting the results of its work.
The third and final priority is to strengthen automakers’ supply chains, especially in batteries. Europe is only just developing in the Li-ion cell segment, so it is extremely irresistible to the strategy of China, which is ready to sell us batteries cheaply, even below production costs. That’s why there was a proposal to support the Old Continent’s manufacturers.
Editor’s opinion: car companies probably understand that as they get more slack in 2025, it will be all the more difficult for them to fit into the norms in the following years. So they can either count on the fact that in three years there will be negotiations again and “somehow it will be done,” or they can expect numerous launches of low-cost and popular models that will convince more buyers in the second half of the decade. We get the impression that this is scenario number 2.
