German car industry calls for reversal of EU 2035 combustion engine ban
German car industry calls for reversal of EU 2035 combustion engine ban
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/66415028
In Germany, when we read news like these, we say "ich kann gar nicht so viel essen wie ich kotzen möchte", and I think that's beautiful.
SHOCK NEWS! Companies founded on thing ask for ban on thing to be reversed.
The actually shocking thing is that this NEWS is a lie told a million times already and we still pretend that it's true.
In fact the actual car industry is begging for clear guidelines for years and for the most part loudly advocating for a stop of this useless discussion as they WANT to have a stable basis for their planning.
It's a mass of (often small) suppliers that refused for years to change anything and are now finally seeing the wall they are heading for.
Why do German car companies act like the EU is a major oil producer? Have they secretly found a massive well in Bavaria that they are keeping secret?
They think that their combustion engines are the best out there. But for electric, they really are not special… so they will loose a unique sales point
So they wanna bet against exponential worldwide growth!? Good luck, boomers.
For the people that have a hard time reading the text in the graph:
I think we should be aware of the framing the car industry has successfully introduced here.
The car industry and conservative politicians keep ranting about the "combustion ban" and proclaim that we should remain "technologically open" when in fact the opposite is true.
The regulations do not ban a specific technology nor do they codify which technology to use.
They just set emission targets. Car makers can use any technology that meets these targets. If they invent a miracle combustion engine without emissions they are free to build it.
Imho, we should not follow their framing and whenever someone talks about keeping combustion engines we should immediately change the narrative to whether or not we want to keep emissions and only talk about emission no matter how often they try to derail the discussion with their talk about technology.
But there's a big difference between polluting emissions, and greenhouse gas emissions. So far, CO2 hasn't been considered anything but a harmless byproduct but it's one of the main drivers of global warming. So unless there's a combustion engine that does not produce that (maybe hydrogen-based?)...
And the car/petrol industry has systematically ignored these things for decades. It would have been possible to build more sustainable cars that consume less than half the fuel, decades ago. Or invest into alternatives (hydrogen, electricity etc.).
And now they're whining.
So far, CO2 hasn’t been considered anything but a harmless byproduct but it’s one of the main drivers of global warming.
I mostly agree with you but "so far" is pretty generous considering that the effects of CO2 as a greenhouse gas has been known for over a century.
There is a ICE fuel that does not produce co2, at least considering the whole fuel cycle, it's called biofuel and it's already used by half a century in some places like Brazil
They are digging their own grave.
Really bad idea. To be fair the German car industry is hit hard by it. Not as much the actual car makers, but the suppliers. When you produce say crankshafts moving to EVs is much harder. With falling car sales numbers in Europe and EVs taking market share they really have a problem. That btw is a big reason, why Germany has such a bad economy right now.
However EVs are the future and giving those companies a few more years is certain to doom the ones, which can survive. When you look at EV sales you find many German car companies doing pretty well. With the combustion engine industry in a death spiral, the lobbying work is going to decrease as well.
I think if you postpone de deadline to 2040 the same companies will have the same complaints
Yep. Rinse and repeat until you have to do it anyhow. Except the ecosphere is dying meanwhile.
And keep claiming you're actually on the people's side on this.
German car makes rely on exports, and a lot of other countries are much more electric car friendly, or will ban the sale of petrol cars soon. They are already late to the EV market; if they delay till 2040 then they wont be able to sell any cars overseas anymore and will have to close factories.
They have been lobbying for this for years now. Not that I think it's good, but it's not so new. It's an ongoing attempt.
Especially since changing the law needs a qualified majority to do so. So 55% of the countries with 65% of the population voting for changing the law. As the article stated, not even the German government is currently willing to do so, as the social democrats want to keep it.
Of course Mercedes and BMW want to have the combustion ban reversed.
Car companies are pathetically clinging to the past, who would have known? Unfortunately, that fits with our conservative "we wanna stay car centric" government that people somehow still voted for.
The best way out for them is to delay any switch to EV's. As far as I know, their current plan is to sell "hybrid" motors, which are said to burn both gasoline and hydrogen.
Hydrogen is a fuel with a future - maybe in shipping with the fixed routes and general incompatibility with batteries - but in the context of cars it's not economical (at scale) and they know that. So 99% of the time, those hybrid motors will drive on gasoline, because who would pay 10 times the amount for something only available at a select few stations.
But if they sell those hybrid motors as a 0 emission alternative, they can keep selling something that's basically a combustion engine as long as the gas station network still exists, while blaming the rising emissions on consumer preference and bleeding the government dry with hydrogen subsidies in the wrong sector.
People who profit from Climate change are against rules to slow down climate change
more news at 10
I don't know about other working class people but I live paycheck to paycheck. The only vehicles in my price range are like 3k 15 yr old beaters. Ain't no way I could put a down payment on an EV let alone a loan.
Those old cars will not be hit by the ban though. It's only about new cars and initial registrations. Calling this generally an ICE ban is masterful lobby propaganda.
Jesus Christ... You still have ten fucking years to go all electric. So instead of lamanting get to fucking work!
Many companies have expertise producing things, which are not needed at all in EVs. That means switching industries or let the company die and make as much money in the meantime as possible. Given how difficult it is to switch industries, many choose the later option. For them complaining is just logical.
Also oil companies.
The same was true for steam engines, they were not forbidden but the companies that only complained still went bankrupt.
They did a long time ago. This is in fact a fight between the actual producers that want (and demanded for years) those legal guidelines and a mass of small specialised suppliers that didn't care to (or actually couldn't) change anything about their business model.
Most EVs still cost 10-20K more than their conventional counterparts. Most working class people simply cannot afford an EV, end of story. It has very little to do with "choice" and "awareness" or whatever.
Which is entirely bullshit and partly caused by misplanning proper production numbers and mostly by just plain anti-EV propaganda that unneccessarily reduces demand by making you believe in actual desinformation.
From an economical perspective we knew for many years that EVs are actually cheaper once batteries fall under ~100$/kWh... Now go lookup battery costs...
And alas EVs are actually cheaper already (or are we trying to pretend that people -in particular those struggling to pay the costs- are paying them with available cash and not already financing them over years?).
Working class people rarely can afford new cars anyway and this ban targets initial registrations, not the already existing market of second hand cars.
You need a bigger calculator.
Sure, the purchase price is somewhat higher, but if you look at all the costs in the lifespan of the vehicle, the EVs are cheaper.
Working class people can't afford not to buy EVs.
End of story? Where is the fucking story?
The car companies need to make them more affordable.