"I don’t understand this fight against the car or some technologies": Germany and Italy raise their voices against the EU

The approval of the European law for ban sale of vehicles with combustion engines from 2035 is very close. So close that there is barely a vote left for it to go ahead, after the European Commission and the member countries reached an agreement in October 2022 and the European Parliament ratified the decision last February.

In the absence of a final vote in the European Council, everything indicates that the rule will go ahead, so the voices opposed to the European decision return to the charge, with the final objective of a decision that already seems very difficult to reverse given the bureaucratic deadlines that are handled.

From synthetic fuels…

Among the countries that have been most dissatisfied with the European course in the automobile industry are Germany and Italy. Matteo Salvini, Italian Vice President and Minister of Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility, points out that “Has no sense” the new regulation that you want to approve in the European Union. A measure that he described as “suicide” for Europe and a “gift” for China.

With less flashy but equally forceful words, Volker Wissing, Federal Minister of Digital Affairs and Transport of Germany, has expressed himself. “We need synthetic fuels as there is no alternative if we want to operate our fleet of vehicles in a climate neutral way,” he recently noted. in a radio interview.

But Wissing did not stop there. “Whoever takes climate-neutral mobility seriously must keep open all technology options and also use them. I don’t understand this fight against the car and why people want to ban some technologies,” he stressed.

The situation is so serious that a possibility begins to seriously hover over the next European Council vote: a No from Germany and Italy, two of the most important countries in Europe and where the automotive industry represents 5% and 8.5% of their economies, respectively.

Germany and Italy have taken up a flag to save combustion engines: the synthetic fuels. In the drafting of the October text, they already managed to include the possibility of selling combustion engines that run on neutral fuels. The problem: not everyone has the same idea of ​​what a neutral fuel is.

… to neutral fuels

As we reported in October, German and Italian pressure ended up including a small exception in the text of the new law. One that Germany asks the European Union to clarify in order to obtain its favorable vote at the next European Council.

Germans and Italians want neutral synthetic fuels to be used. A type of fuel that expels CO2 during its burning in combustion engines but which are considered neutral in emissions because during their production CO2 is also absorbed from the atmosphere. If it is in the same proportion, they consider that the fuel is neutral.

But Europe has another idea of ​​what a neutral car should be: one that does not expel CO2 through your exhaust pipe. That is why the use of hydrogen has a place but not the synthetic fuels that we know at the moment. And it doesn’t look like in the future we’ll be able to have synthetic fuels that work this way.

The reason these two countries want to push for the admission of synthetic fuels lies in the strength of their premium and luxury firms. In Germany, BMW has announced that it will continue to develop combustion engines and Porsche has made strong investments in a Chilean plant to develop this type of fuel. In Italy, companies like Ferrari or Lamborghini look forward to the possibility of using these fuels.

mass vehicles

The real question is how this decision can affect the mass vehicle. And the answer is that the German and Italian refusal is short-lived, since the decisions that will be made before 2035 they will force manufacturers to opt for high electrification if they want to continue selling vehicles in the European territory.

First of all, the arrival of Euro 7 will put new maximum limits on emissions. A rule that will take into account the expulsion of polluting substances from vehicles, to the point of controlling how much the car brakes contaminate.

The new limits are yet to be defined but the European Union does seem to have decided that in 2030 wants to have reduced the CO2 emissions by 55% compared to those registered in 2021. This means that, inevitably, manufacturers will have to end up betting on the electric car or the plug-in hybrid.

It is no coincidence that the firms that are betting the most on synthetic fuels are manufacturers of premium or luxury vehicles. At the moment, the production of this type of fuel is so expensive that its price is prohibitive. In addition, maintaining engines of this type with low production will entail irremediable manufacturing costs that will make them very expensive.

With this roadmap, it is very likely that the offer of a vehicle with a combustion engine will serve as a claim for higher purchasing power, one more option for differentiation in the sector. BMW will continue to develop combustion engines, yes, but they will be the most powerful and expensive, six and eight cylinder.

To all of the above, we must add the enormous investments that manufacturers are making in the development of electric cars and the profound transformations that the industry is undergoing, with billion-dollar investments in the construction of new plants and remodeling of current ones, as well as a reduction in weight. of their templates, before the production of vehicles that need less manpower.