EU abandons plans for 2035 combustion engine ban, senior lawmaker says
Plans to impose an effective ban on selling new cars with combustion engines in the European Union in 2035 have been abandoned, a senior EU lawmaker told Germany’s Bild newspaper.
Instead, there will be more flexible rules to achieve a reduction in CO2 emissions from cars, Manfred Weber, president of the EPP, the largest party in the European Parliament, told Bild.
“For new registrations from 2035 onwards, a 90 percent reduction in CO2 emissions will now be mandatory for car manufacturers’ fleet targets, instead of 100 percent,” Weber told the paper.
“There will also be no 100 percent target from 2040 onwards. This means that the technology ban on combustion engines is off the table,” he said. “All engines currently manufactured in Germany can therefore continue to be produced and sold.”
Weber said this sent an important signal “to the entire automotive industry and secures tens of thousands of industrial jobs,” reflecting concerns over the future of one of Europe’s most important industries.
The agreement would allow combustion-engine cars with a plug-in hybrid drivetrain and extended-range EVs, which use a combustion engine as a generator, to be sold beyond 2035.
Weber’s comments, which still need to be confirmed by Brussels, mark a key victory for Germany, the bloc’s top economy, in its efforts to protect its most important industry, which has come under intense pressure due to growing competition and trade barriers.
The European Commission is expected to officially present its plans on Dec. 16 as part of a package to help the industry in the face of rising Chinese competition, weak EV sales and high costs.
The proposal will then have to be approved by individual governments and the European Parliament. Weber’s support for the new plan is important because the EPP is the largest political group in the Parliament.
In 2022, the commission announced that all new car and van engines would need to have zero CO2 emissions by 2035, effectively banning sales of gasoline and diesel models in favor of battery-electric vehicles.
Automakers and some EU governments, including Germany and Italy, have been lobbying for softer regulation. Volkswagen, Stellantis, Renault, Mercedes-Benz and BMW have all argued in favor of dropping the ban, instead letting customers decide what they want rather than having firm targets.
ICE extension to 2040 is another scenario
Other media reports said the commission is considering a five-year delay to the zero-emission mandate until 2040 to allow sales of combustion engine cars with PHEV or EREV drivetrains.
The extension would be based on the condition that combustion engine cars will run on advanced biofuels and so-called e-fuels — made using captured CO2 and renewable electricity, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Such a design would enable the EU to still aim for having zero-emission new passenger cars by 2035, depending on the parameters of the proposal.
While e-fuels can, in theory, be climate neutral, they are expensive, and the technology is at an early stage. The emissions benefit of biofuels is hotly debated. One reason for this is the strain they can put on land otherwise used for food production.
PHEV emissions under scrutiny
The commission’s package is also expected to defer plans to tighten the way PHEV emissions are calculated, a metric known as the utility factor.
The commission had considered moving toward a system that measures real-world emissions based on on-board monitoring instead of the current metric, which uses lab assumptions that significantly understate actual emissions, critics say.
electrek.co
