Punitive fines means they can pay themselves out of abiding by the legal limit. This should not be acceptable. Shut down all the cars that are not within legal limits and have the car companies recompense the customers they already sold them to.
The longer we keep these unreformable dinosaurs alive artificially, the more damage it will do to the european economy, environment and people, when they finally fall.
They are in fact just financial incentives and in that regard well understood with companies long prepared to work within that system. Everything else is just the usual loud PR bullshit for morons.
Germany was all about ‘punitive’ measures following the financial crisis—when it was someone else’s economy in trouble.
Germany’s car manufacturers thought they could continue making efficiency gains with combustion engines until the EV fad was over and everyone retuned to ICE cars. Looks like they were wrong, and that’s no reason to sacrifice the environment further.
Because that's exactly the stuff moronic voters want to hear. And it's the reason the even bigger bullshitters praising how only combustion engines, burning coal, obsolete economic ideas and social policies from 50 to 100 years ago can save us from total destruction will win the next election. Just like the retarted, corrupt and fossil fuel addict conservatives are on the rise everywhere... unless there is an even more backwards far-right of course.