The European Commission unveiled a plan on Tuesday to drop the EU’s effective ban on new combustion-engine cars from 2035 after pressure from the region’s auto sector, marking the bloc’s biggest retreat from its green policies in recent years.
The move, which still needs approval from EU governments and the European Parliament, would allow continued sales of some non-electric vehicles. Carmakers in regional industrial powerhouse Germany and in Italy had sought easing of the rules.
The EU executive appears to have bowed to calls from carmakers to keep selling plug-in hybrids and range extenders that burn fuel as they struggle to compete against Tesla, opens new tab and Chinese electric vehicle makers.
Yes, a habitable planet for humanity would be nice, but have you considered the portfolios of a few selfish assholes?
But have you considered that those assholes lobbied very hard to protect their interest? Shouldn’t their money and time investment be rewarded?
/s just in case
It’s only fair!
this is what pisses me off about every net zero by 2050 or whenever plan, they will do nothing until 2045 and then just give up or kick the can again.
“We didn’t put in any effort until the last minute and now we can’t easily do it. It’s not fair to our shareholders”
If I tried to use that bs as a a reason for being late ate work I wouldn’t have a job there anymore
Or expelled with the same attitude towards rent
Or a presentation or an essay or exercise or utility bills or…
Or what?
We are going extinct.
We’re finally hitting the brakes…
Regarding environmental protection.
… Again
The great thing is that it won’t matter. EVs are going to become extremely cheaper and more efficient, making them the clear choice over the next couple years.
Cheaper for the industry to manufacture, certainly. Cheaper for the consumer to purchase, I have my suspicions.
I would love to see a return to smaller cars - sedans even - but the shareholders might not like lower profits per unit, so I’m not sure we’re going to see prices plateau let alone decline.
I don’t drive but I’d like to see a return to cars that aren’t Orwellian spying devices.
Cheaper for the consumer to purchase, I have my suspicions.
Why would it be cheaper to produce, but more expensive to purchase? Because of bullshit rules that will not be long lived.
I wish I could share in your optimism.
They’re already very cheap as long as you only want two wheels and aren’t fussed about having a roof.
Yeah, this whole thing sounds a lot like a section of horse-drawn carriage industry going down the route of committing suicide by using crooked politicians to try and stop the march of evolution via legislation rather that the route of adapting to an unstoppable change and thus surviving.
In 20 years time most of the companies pushing for this will be either be gone or become cottage shops and this shit will almost certainly also have negatively impacted the rest of the industry in Europe.
I think this is the difference between opening doors to the future vs closing doors to the past. When China funded EVs and battery research, they opened the door to the future. When the EU and US try to ban gas engines, they are trying to close the door to the past. Guess which one works.
So from 2035 it was supposed to be possible to only sell cars with 100% reduction in CO2 emissions. They want to change it to 90% reduction and still allow to sell plug-in-hybrids which is bullshit because recent analysis of real life usage show that plug-in hybrids run on gas most of the time and are not nearly as efficient as estimated. They should focus on building charging infrastructure instead. German car industry is dying anyway.
I wonder how plug-in hybrids are that bad in terms of gas-to-electric ratio. Might need a proper source on that. Most usage should be from work-home travel, and that should be reachable with just electric power.
Maybe the solution is not simply to block hybrids, but to solve the reasons they don’t drive electric. This could be putting more chargers at home/workplace or something else entirely (idk what the analysis pointed out as reason)
“27% of driving was done in electric mode” - this is how. It doesn’t point at any reason for that. And yes, there may be a solution to this but we don’t know if it even exists. We should first try to make plug-ins more efficient and then consider excluding them from the ban. Of course this decision has nothing to do with efficiency, it’s just Germany desperately trying to save their weakening economy.
The thing is, if only 27% drive in electric mode, that indicates deeper problems. If it was possible for people to easily charge their vehicles, most would use electricity, it’s way cheaper. The fact they aren’t indicates that the infrastructure just isn’t there. Most people don’t live in the suburbs, and I don’t know for other countries but here like 70% of parking is done on the street or on open parking lots. Even in larger garages, I don’t think there’s a single one here with more than a token 4-5 charging stations. We have to first fix that before electric cars become viable for the majority of people. If this bans normal ICE cars but leaves plug-in hybrids I think that’s actually fine, since as infrastructure improves these cars will become more and more like full EVs.
That’s not the point. EU wanted to go for 100% reduction in CO2 emissions from cars sold after 2035. Now car manufacturers are pushing for 90% reduction because they failed to adapt in time. In reality there’s only 30% reduction in hybrids. Even if the infrastructure is there and we reach 90% of battery driving for plug-ins that’s still less than the initial plan. But there are no plans to actually achieve the 90% battery usage so it’s all bullshit. They simply want to keep selling gas engines and plug-in hybrids are just the latest lie they want to use to avoid the ban. The first lie was e-fuels but I guess they realized now this is not going to work.
They want to keep making money on polluting technology and it’s up to us to figure out how to create the infrastructure to make it less polluting. It’s plastic recycling all over again.
What reset? This sounds made up.
Okay, but give us better public transport options instead!
Opens new tab?
had to hide the porn one
“Opens new tab” ? Is this written by AI?
No, it’s just an artifact of copying reuters
Complete switch to electric will not happen until governments make it possible to essentially get one basic electric vehicle for pennies by trading your old ICE vehicle.
Otherwise guess what, the vast majority of people don’t have 30.000 to drop on a new buy just because maa environment. Saying that, I am all in for a complete switch when there will be affordable cars that can do at least 700km on a charge.
The ban was only on the sale of new cars, not the existing cars on the road.
It would only allow cars emitting 90%less vs 2021 level. It’s not much of a change and it leaves room for innovation. It’s not that bad.
