“Manufacturers firmly committed to vehicle electrification should not have to pay fines in 2025,” French Minister of the Economy Antoine Armand said on Sunday in the columns of the newspaper Les Echos. A request for a shift in the timetable for potential sanctions in the event of non-compliance with future CAFE standards finally brought at the beginning of the week in Brussels by the French Minister of Industry Marc Ferracci.
Upcoming adjustments?
The response from the European Commission was not long in coming, through the voice of one of its spokespersons who estimated, Monday before the press in Brussels, that talk about a “change of position” on this subject is “really premature”. Measures have been put in place since 2019 “to allow the industry to make the transition (…) We will see at the end of 2025 how many cars have been sold, what the emissions are”added the spokesperson, thus leaving the door open to adjustments, not to say relaxation in favor of manufacturers in the event of CO2 emissions being exceeded at the end of next year.
Stellantis is resisting
Let us also recall that the majority of European car manufacturers have called for urgent aid measures to face the tightening of CO2 emissions standards in 2025, which they consider themselves incapable of respecting as it stands, in particular because of the erosion of sales of electric cars. The French group Renault has, for example, asked Brussels to review the CO2 emissions targets from 2025. On the other hand, Stellantis, which is no longer part of ACEA, is opposed to this, highlighting the efforts that he made “for several years” in this matter, while remembering that each manufacturer knew what to expect.
