The calls started just before the Munich motor show in September. They were led by no less than Ola Källenius, who wears two major hats in the European car industry — he’s the boss of Mercedes, and currently the president of the ACEA, the group representing Europe’s car makers at governmental and EU level.
Källenius said, ahead of Munich, that the EU’s legislation, which means that the sales of combustion-engined cars have to come to a halt in 2035, will “need a reality check”.
“Otherwise, we are heading at full speed against a wall,” he warned. “Of course, we have to decarbonise, but it has to be done in a technology-neutral way. We must not lose sight of our economy.”
The car makers’ demands on the EU have now been made, and they include such alterations to the legislation as allowing for the greater use of biofuels and synthetic e-fuels, which would be counted as being zero-emissions in carbon terms, as well as other measures, such as a relaxation of the legislation when it comes to hybrids.
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Sigrid de Vries, director general of ACEA, told The Irish Times on a group call that: “The auto industry is delivering. [Electric] vehicles are there. They’re on the market. They’re available. This is not a supply issue.
“Vehicles are not the bottleneck, it’s a demand issue and an enabling factors issue and a cost issue. So it’s not so much a matter of whether we want it to go or not. It’s a question of, is this realistic? Is it achievable? Can we get there?
“As it stands today, because of several factors, it’s not achievable, and we need to work and to act now to make sure that we get this transformation back on track. And we believe that including more flexibility is an important way of doing that.”
The car makers’ position has been described as a disgrace by eco think-tank Transport & Environment (T&E). It says if the manufacturers get their way with the legislation, European EV sales could fall by half, just as other parts of the world are adopting them en masse, not least China.
Lucien Mathieu, cars director at T&E, said: “This position is a disgrace. It will completely undermine the investment certainty needed for Europe to catch up in the EV race.
“Turning the EU’s most important automotive regulation into a Swiss cheese will not restore the industry’s competitiveness. It is a cynical attempt to dismantle a central pillar of Europe’s climate law. If the Commission capitulates to these demands, it will only hand a further competitive advantage to Chinese automakers.”
So far, the president of the EU Commission, Ursula Von Der Leyen, has been amenable to lobbying from car makers on this point and has said that new proposals could be published by the end of this year.
Mathieu said: “Carmakers are, on the one hand, calling for a drastic acceleration of the review and, on the other, don’t have a clue about what they want.
“They ask for a shopping list of flexibilities and loopholes, but don’t allow any time for proper evaluation of these options. They want to go faster, but they don’t even know in what direction and don’t want people to have the time to even think about it. This is a recipe for disaster.”
De Vries responded by saying that flexibility is the entire point of what the car makers want and need. “We’re not arguing to slow down. We’re arguing to accelerate the transformation,” he told The Irish Times.
“We believe that the current system, the current rigid way that the legislation is laid out, is actually the factor that slows down the transition.
“And you will know that in other jurisdictions around the world, they have a different regulatory or policy system which is less strangling, and which actually spurs innovation and works more as a market-oriented approach, and therefore also helps to accelerate this transformation.
“You see that also in some European countries, because there is a more synchronised way in making sure that there is charging infrastructure available, that there are consumer incentives, you need to pull the markets at the beginning of this transformation.
“So it’s not about slowing down. To the contrary, it’s about accelerating, and also because we want to continue as a globally oriented auto industry to serve global markets.”
The point about charging networks seems to be well made, and one of de Vries’ key points is that Europe’s car makers are being held solely responsible for the transition to electric motoring when there are several other key factors governing that changeover, which are almost entirely out of car makers’ hands.
Those include charging networks, which have improved but are still well behind what is needed. The EU Commission’s target is that the charging network across the bloc should increase by 410,000 chargers annually, but last year only 250,000 charging points — 84 per cent of which were slow chargers — were added, and 2025 is tracking towards a similar number.
Equally, the car makers point out that Europe has to import nearly all of the raw materials for EV batteries, and that energy costs are as much as 130 per cent higher than the costs in China and the US.
Where biofuels and e-fuels are concerned, though, T&E is adamant that they do not help in the push to decarbonise.
Cian Delaney, energy campaign coordinator at T&E, said biofuels cannot play a major role in decarbonising our cars and lorries.
“Compared to electrification, they are an incredibly inefficient fuel alternative, and can actually do more harm than good,” he said.
“Biofuels that are made from waste products, like hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO), are presented as green, but they cannot be produced sustainably in the amounts needed for even a fraction of our fleets.
“Fraud is a major concern. Exports from Asia of used cooking oil and palm oil by-products, like Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME), two key ingredients for HVO, are significantly larger than what is considered feasible to collect. It’s a major red flag when you have palm-producing powerhouses like Malaysia and Indonesia exporting more used cooking oil and palm oil by-products than what is possible for them to collect.”
Delaney was especially scathing about the Irish Department of Transport’s plans for biofuels, saying: “The Department of Transport’s plan to increase blending mandates for diesel to 20 per cent by 2030 will only put more pressure on global carbon sinks and food security through increased demand for land.”
