The coronavirus pandemic slammed the car market to a halt almost three years ago, at a time when everything pointed to a 2020 of rising sales recovering the best years lived in the sector. But after the logical slowdown of 2020 and a 2021 that was not yet expected to return to pre-pandemic figures, it is trusted in this year as an exercise to recover at least pre-covid levels.
But after the crisis caused first by the consequences of the pandemic itself and then by the effects of the chip supply crisiseverything has turned against and the European Association of Automobile Manufacturers (ACEA) has already revised down its forecasts and estimates that passenger car registrations in the European Union stand at 9.6 million, which represents a drop of 26% compared to the 13.03 million sales in 2019 and a slight decrease of 1% compared to the figures from the previous year.
In the first eight months of the year, volumes were down almost 12%, reaching some six million new cars sold. As the association has pointed out, until now, the market was only limited on the supply side, since the continuous shortage of components limited production volumes, however, demand may also suffer in the coming months due to inflation and recession.
For all these reasons, ACEA has asked for a political framework that allows the sector to recover and make the change to zero emissions. “To guarantee the back to growthwith an even higher share of electric vehicle sales in order to meet climate targets, we urgently need the right framework conditions in place,” said ACEA President and CEO of BMWOliver Zipse.
The manager recalled that recent years have been marked by “major events” such as Brexit, the coronavirus pandemic, bottlenecks in the supply of semiconductors and the war in Ukraine, which have had a impact on energy prices and availability.
“All this highlights the speed, depth and unpredictability with which our world is changing. This also applies to the geopolitical context, where there are direct consequences for our industry globally interconnected network and its tight value chains”, Zipse underlined.
For her part, the new director general of the association, Sigrid de Vries, has indicated that, despite the market contraction and from the pressure of inflation and energy costs, the automotive industry continues to invest in R&D and in the skills and technologies that drive the ecological transition and digital.
The e-Fuels, in question
Precisely, one of the solutions for this transition, that of the synthetic fuelsis not quite convincing in Europe and, according to the environmental association Transport & Environment (T&E), are a less environmentally friendly solution than battery electric cars. This association ensures that in 2030 an electric car will emit 53% less CO2 throughout its life cycle than a car that runs on e-Fuels.
The data of the organization indicate that only 2% of all carsaround five million units circulating on European roads by the year 2035 will be able to use synthetic fuels.
The study that indicates that oil lobbyists They say allowing the sale of new combustion vehicles running on synthetic fuels will help scale up the technology to make the current car fleet climate-neutral. However, according to T&E data on the volumes forecast by the industry, of the 287 million vehicles in the European Union, only five million could run on e-Fuels in 2035.
For this reason, T&E has described these fuels as a ‘Trojan horse’ for oil companies and engine manufacturers to delay the transition to ‘zero emission’ technologies.
“The industry’s own data shows that there will only be enough for a small fraction of the cars On circulation. Policymakers should close the door on this ‘Trojan horse’ for the fossil fuel industry,” said Yoann Gimbert, electric mobility analyst at T&E.
from the environmental association denounce that the forecast of the industry is based on e-Fuels produced in the EU, but does not include carbon captured from industrial emitters and it is not clear how much of the electricity would be certified as 100% renewable. Therefore, the number of cars that could run on synthetic fuels would be even smaller if only carbon-neutral e-Fuels were used, that is, those made entirely with additional renewable electricity and carbon dioxide (CO2) captured directly from the air.
According to tests made a car that burned synthetic fuels emitted the same amount of toxic emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) than the burning of fossil fuels. Furthermore, synthetic fuels will continue to be expensive to produce for some time, and running a car on this type of fuel will cost the average driver an additional €10,000 over five years.
