Brussels is sticking to its controversial plans for curbs on combustion engines in the EU from 2035, according to internal documents, despite heavy pressure from the car industry to water down the incoming rules.
Answers prepared for the bloc’s climate chief Wopke Hoekstra for when he faces parliamentary hearings next month and seen by the Financial Times say the EU “cannot and should not roll back” its plan to outlaw the sale of new cars powered by fossil fuels.
The law, announced in 2021, has come under fire from Europe’s carmakers as they struggle with flagging electric vehicle sales and intense competition from Chinese manufacturers.
Except for Renault, all the major European car manufacturers have issued profit warnings this year. Volkswagen, Germany’s biggest private sector employer, was considering shutting plants in Germany for the first time in its 87-year history, it said last month.
Industry body Acea has also warned that the sector could face millions of euros in fines when stricter rules come into force next year aimed at cutting overall emissions from cars in Europe by 15 per cent compared with a 2021 baseline.
Italy has called on the European Commission to push back the ban, France is seeking more “flexibility” in how it is applied, while Germany’s coalition government is in favour of keeping combustion engines for cars that run on alternative, environmentally friendly fuels.
Adolfo Urso, Italy’s industry minister, warned last month that the 2035 combustion engine ban threatened a “crisis” for European car manufacturing.
Hoekstra’s briefing, however, argues that the new rules create “predictability for investors and manufacturers” and are essential for the bloc to reach its goals on reducing CO₂ emissions, as well as to “strengthen the competitiveness of the EU automotive industry”.
Julia Poliscanova, senior director at the NGO group Transport & Environment, pointed out that there would be no incentives to build battery factories if the ban were pushed back. “Instead of undermining it, carmakers should instead focus on ways Europe can help build a competitive EV industry, such as an EU battery fund, and policies that reward clean, local manufacturing,” she said.
Leonore Gewessler, Austria’s climate and energy minister, told the FT that “the future of the automotive industry is electric”. She said Europe could not afford to fall behind on this technology, the way it had in smartphones despite it having an early mobile phone champion in Finland’s Nokia.
The pressure to find more flexibility in the rules comes amid a broader groundswell of concern about the implementation of the EU’s ambitious Green Deal climate law, which aims to push the bloc to cut emissions by 55 per cent by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050.
If I was an adversarial foreign power and could implement policies that would destruct the prosperity of people in Europe, it would be indistinguishable from what the current leadership is doing.
Well I hope we will have proper evs in those next 10 years.
This is the right thing to do. However, it needs to be paired with decisive, large-scale charging infrastructure investment.
Good. Sitting here in Norway. Watching Germans suck hydro electricity out because they got emotional over nuclear power. At the same time listening to Germans go “oh you can’t moralise anyone, oil oil oil”. Great let’s see you guys put the pedal to the metal. You want to end big oil? Good for you, now fucking show us.
It will be repealed anyway imo, at least I hope.
Do not ban ICE, instead create an environment where companies have to innovate and help the market flow into more electric/hybrid platform based autos. Banning something and hoping it all works out is a foolish.
Problem with EVs for allot of manufacturers is how similar they are in terms of feel and personality. Especially at the higher end sports cars which Italy really does well in like Ferrari or Lamborghini it’s going to be interesting to see if they have any ability to differentiate themselves when there’s 50 Competing versions of the same boring sports car.
Clean air! Finally. Some areas are really bad. People increasingly suffering from diseases, both physically and mentally. It is the responsibility of the government to protect its citizens.
It’s the only way to wean the European producers off the ice engine. Good job by the EU.
This ban is useless, EVs are a commercial inevitability, as since 2018 the TCO of an EV was below the one of an ICE. In the next 3 years we will reach price parity and, u less you are someone who tows for very long distances ( I’m one of them) you would be financially retarded to buy an ICE that would cost you more in every single point of comparison.
What the EU is trying to do is to save 20% of the European car companies instead of loosing 100%.
People fail to realize the bloodbath that is coming and how short sighted legacy car companies are/were.
The funniest part though will be when Toyota Implodes and makes the entire Japan economy crash hard.
The chinese trojan horses made their job, European car industry is collapsing and the chinese cars are already ivading our roads, we’re going straight to the worst industrial crisis of the last two centuries
I see no reason to worry. 2035 is in 10 years. There’s plenty of time to double the price of electricity by then.
We’re getting so f#@ked. Lots of people bought into this EV transition, myself included, only to see the infrastructure lacking behind and the price of electricity skyrocketing.
All over Europe many cities do not even have almost any charging infrastructure, plus there are many areas with high density in apartments without private parking, and the street parking is already limited that if there are no policies implemented from now it will be impossible to have a good infrastructure by 2035. Combine this with a refusal of many places to even implement good alternative transport methods, with cycling or reliable public transportation networks it seems highly unlikely this will not be pushed back or have many exceptions built-in.
Chance for a leap forward! Shinkansen between every EU capital 🚄
Good
“Controversial” yeah, for German manufacturers who were sitting on their collective hands, breaking with maximum strength to not evolve towards this inevitable development since we know that oil is finite and that Tesla has kicked their ass.
Good
No thanks, I prefer to have my petrol car from 10-20 years ago that doesn’t cost a fortune to maintain, and doesn’t ship with software that could kill me because a lazy programmer forgot an if statement.
that is the dumbest thing they could have done.
Yeah nice, big cities dont have a problem with charging, but the entire rest of the country? Yeah good luck when 10-30k people try to charge at 2 stations.
Electricity is already expensive as shit, that will make it way worse.
they should invest a lot more in eFuels, so all cars can stay as lopng as possible on the street which makes it way way better than forcing people into buying 50-100k cars, which many cant even afford.
Show me a used EV for 1k-2k, that I could still drive for years, like I could with an older VW, Audi, MB, etc. Oh, right, no such thing can run on batteries. Green nutters.
Europe needs to go ham over energy. We do not have fossil fuel, it’s first and foremost a security issue.
Russia or the Middle East sneeze and we get porked.
If we could have a healthy infrastructure for energy production and storage, we would be in a much better position.
Finally, EVs are mostly sitting around. They have massive batteries. If you subsidize their purchase, you could say: “I’m taking the battery when it’s done for recycling and it goes straight to the grid” or use the batteries when they are sitting around doing nothing to balance the grid from 80%-100% or something.
My take, don’t worry about it. Reality is catching up fast ( that there will be no transition, at least not the one people are thinking about )
Investing in trains and light rail ( most efficient energy use per passenger ) would be smarter. But that would require a fiscal union and accepting Draghi’s debt proposal ( I don’t see it happening ).
As a car enthusiast this is such a bullshit
While I like the thought of having less petrol dependence, I have to admit that I’m scared of the replacement. Electrical cars aren’t great for the environment either and come with their own exclusive problems like how they’re extreme fire hazards in tunnels and underground parkings.
It’d be great if this change comes along with a bigger focus on public transport, and smaller personal vehicles.
25 comments
Brussels is sticking to its controversial plans for curbs on combustion engines in the EU from 2035, according to internal documents, despite heavy pressure from the car industry to water down the incoming rules.
Answers prepared for the bloc’s climate chief Wopke Hoekstra for when he faces parliamentary hearings next month and seen by the Financial Times say the EU “cannot and should not roll back” its plan to outlaw the sale of new cars powered by fossil fuels.
The law, announced in 2021, has come under fire from Europe’s carmakers as they struggle with flagging electric vehicle sales and intense competition from Chinese manufacturers.
Except for Renault, all the major European car manufacturers have issued profit warnings this year. Volkswagen, Germany’s biggest private sector employer, was considering shutting plants in Germany for the first time in its 87-year history, it said last month.
Industry body Acea has also warned that the sector could face millions of euros in fines when stricter rules come into force next year aimed at cutting overall emissions from cars in Europe by 15 per cent compared with a 2021 baseline.
Italy has called on the European Commission to push back the ban, France is seeking more “flexibility” in how it is applied, while Germany’s coalition government is in favour of keeping combustion engines for cars that run on alternative, environmentally friendly fuels.
Adolfo Urso, Italy’s industry minister, warned last month that the 2035 combustion engine ban threatened a “crisis” for European car manufacturing.
Hoekstra’s briefing, however, argues that the new rules create “predictability for investors and manufacturers” and are essential for the bloc to reach its goals on reducing CO₂ emissions, as well as to “strengthen the competitiveness of the EU automotive industry”.
Julia Poliscanova, senior director at the NGO group Transport & Environment, pointed out that there would be no incentives to build battery factories if the ban were pushed back. “Instead of undermining it, carmakers should instead focus on ways Europe can help build a competitive EV industry, such as an EU battery fund, and policies that reward clean, local manufacturing,” she said.
Leonore Gewessler, Austria’s climate and energy minister, told the FT that “the future of the automotive industry is electric”. She said Europe could not afford to fall behind on this technology, the way it had in smartphones despite it having an early mobile phone champion in Finland’s Nokia.
The pressure to find more flexibility in the rules comes amid a broader groundswell of concern about the implementation of the EU’s ambitious Green Deal climate law, which aims to push the bloc to cut emissions by 55 per cent by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050.
If I was an adversarial foreign power and could implement policies that would destruct the prosperity of people in Europe, it would be indistinguishable from what the current leadership is doing.
Well I hope we will have proper evs in those next 10 years.
This is the right thing to do. However, it needs to be paired with decisive, large-scale charging infrastructure investment.
Good. Sitting here in Norway. Watching Germans suck hydro electricity out because they got emotional over nuclear power. At the same time listening to Germans go “oh you can’t moralise anyone, oil oil oil”. Great let’s see you guys put the pedal to the metal. You want to end big oil? Good for you, now fucking show us.
It will be repealed anyway imo, at least I hope.
Do not ban ICE, instead create an environment where companies have to innovate and help the market flow into more electric/hybrid platform based autos. Banning something and hoping it all works out is a foolish.
Problem with EVs for allot of manufacturers is how similar they are in terms of feel and personality. Especially at the higher end sports cars which Italy really does well in like Ferrari or Lamborghini it’s going to be interesting to see if they have any ability to differentiate themselves when there’s 50 Competing versions of the same boring sports car.
Clean air! Finally. Some areas are really bad. People increasingly suffering from diseases, both physically and mentally. It is the responsibility of the government to protect its citizens.
It’s the only way to wean the European producers off the ice engine. Good job by the EU.
This ban is useless, EVs are a commercial inevitability, as since 2018 the TCO of an EV was below the one of an ICE. In the next 3 years we will reach price parity and, u less you are someone who tows for very long distances ( I’m one of them) you would be financially retarded to buy an ICE that would cost you more in every single point of comparison.
What the EU is trying to do is to save 20% of the European car companies instead of loosing 100%.
People fail to realize the bloodbath that is coming and how short sighted legacy car companies are/were.
The funniest part though will be when Toyota Implodes and makes the entire Japan economy crash hard.
If only someone predicted this in [2014](https://x.com/tonyseba/status/1761550768975560777)
The chinese trojan horses made their job, European car industry is collapsing and the chinese cars are already ivading our roads, we’re going straight to the worst industrial crisis of the last two centuries
I see no reason to worry. 2035 is in 10 years. There’s plenty of time to double the price of electricity by then.
We’re getting so f#@ked. Lots of people bought into this EV transition, myself included, only to see the infrastructure lacking behind and the price of electricity skyrocketing.
All over Europe many cities do not even have almost any charging infrastructure, plus there are many areas with high density in apartments without private parking, and the street parking is already limited that if there are no policies implemented from now it will be impossible to have a good infrastructure by 2035. Combine this with a refusal of many places to even implement good alternative transport methods, with cycling or reliable public transportation networks it seems highly unlikely this will not be pushed back or have many exceptions built-in.
Chance for a leap forward! Shinkansen between every EU capital 🚄
Good
“Controversial” yeah, for German manufacturers who were sitting on their collective hands, breaking with maximum strength to not evolve towards this inevitable development since we know that oil is finite and that Tesla has kicked their ass.
Good
No thanks, I prefer to have my petrol car from 10-20 years ago that doesn’t cost a fortune to maintain, and doesn’t ship with software that could kill me because a lazy programmer forgot an if statement.
that is the dumbest thing they could have done.
Yeah nice, big cities dont have a problem with charging, but the entire rest of the country? Yeah good luck when 10-30k people try to charge at 2 stations.
Electricity is already expensive as shit, that will make it way worse.
they should invest a lot more in eFuels, so all cars can stay as lopng as possible on the street which makes it way way better than forcing people into buying 50-100k cars, which many cant even afford.
Show me a used EV for 1k-2k, that I could still drive for years, like I could with an older VW, Audi, MB, etc. Oh, right, no such thing can run on batteries. Green nutters.
Europe needs to go ham over energy. We do not have fossil fuel, it’s first and foremost a security issue.
Russia or the Middle East sneeze and we get porked.
If we could have a healthy infrastructure for energy production and storage, we would be in a much better position.
Finally, EVs are mostly sitting around. They have massive batteries. If you subsidize their purchase, you could say: “I’m taking the battery when it’s done for recycling and it goes straight to the grid” or use the batteries when they are sitting around doing nothing to balance the grid from 80%-100% or something.
My take, don’t worry about it. Reality is catching up fast ( that there will be no transition, at least not the one people are thinking about )
Investing in trains and light rail ( most efficient energy use per passenger ) would be smarter.
But that would require a fiscal union and accepting Draghi’s debt proposal ( I don’t see it happening ).
As a car enthusiast this is such a bullshit
While I like the thought of having less petrol dependence, I have to admit that I’m scared of the replacement. Electrical cars aren’t great for the environment either and come with their own exclusive problems like how they’re extreme fire hazards in tunnels and underground parkings.
It’d be great if this change comes along with a bigger focus on public transport, and smaller personal vehicles.