The European Union’s plan to bring forward the stricter Euro7 emission standard to 2025 means that car manufacturers in the EU will no longer be able to sell cars with internal combustion engines, which could leave countries like Poland, Hungary, Czechia, and Germany with tens of thousands in job losses and numerous plant closures.
According to German Sunday paper Bild am Sonntag , a committee of scientists from across Europe, the Advisory Group on Vehicle Emission Standards, has recommended the European Commission set much stricter standards, with nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions of either 30 or even more drastic 10 milligrams per kilometer, compared with the current 60 milligrams for gasoline and 80 milligrams for diesel vehicles.
Bild also quoted the report recommending that “carbon monoxide should get reduced from 1,000 respectively 500 mg to 300 respectively 100 mg,” according to sources from Business Insider.
While the new rules did not say so, they will amount to the effective ban of internal combustion engines, still the overwhelming majority of the European output.
This will mean that all European car manufacturers will either have to close down their internal combustion engine plants — the Volkswagen group’s largest plant is in Hungary — or pour a lot of money into investments to meet the new standards. The only clear beneficiary of the proposed new rules is Tesla, which by 2025 will be capable of producing millions of vehicles per year.
Hildegard Müller, president of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), told Bild am Sonntag that the new emission standards would also require cars to stay within the limits even going uphill or in congested urban traffic, which is practically impossible with current internal combustion engines.
With the planned new norm, which Commission President Ursula von der Leyen earlier wanted to adopt as soon as 2021, the new limits should be as low as the current margin of error.
“The European Commission is indirectly displacing internal combustion engines by hiding behind technical rules. It would be more honest to openly state that it is forbidden to produce petrol or diesel cars in Europe. The only question that can be asked is whether there are suitable alternatives,” Müller said.
While the new regulations will also be bad news for Central European countries which have gained significant car manufacturing and supplier capacities in recent decades — Poland, Hungary, Czechia and Romania — the German car industry is the most vulnerable.
The production of modern internal combustion cars is one of the few value chains that are still entirely in Germany. Many regions, such as Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, the Saarland, Saxony, or North Rhine-Westphalia, stand to lose tens of thousands of highly qualified jobs.
Title image: Audi Rs3 models roll off the production line in Győr, northwestern Hungary. (source: audi.hu)
