The European comission is considering a rule which would essentially ban ne internal combustion engine cars from 2025, only 4 years away. The industry as obviously attacked this, in part by pointing out the rules demanding that all cars be practically clear of emissions by 2025 will rule out clean fuels such as liquid hydrogen.
I fully approve of the move. I do agree that it is going to cause problems for the car industry, however this is largely their own fault. The problem of climate change has been known about for decades, yet the car industry refused to address it. Indeed, it took an engineer from outside to come in and show that electric cars are possible and liked – forming the largest threat that they have faced for a century, in tesla and its vision.
We should not give the car industry a free pass, because they ignored the need to act for so long.
If this law was signed, it would force all car companies with a presence in Europe to go all in on Electric cars. It is true, that cars usually take 7 years from concept to road, and at this point we only have half of this. However, virtually all car companies have designs and factories that could be converted. Making this move with so little warning may well greatly increase the length of time that cars are kept on the road in the short term, and may significantly boost the used car market. It will also be costly for the manufacturers in question, however as I said above, they have had much warning – it just has not turned in to action.
The current annual number of cars sold each year in Europe is around 15 million, requiring all of these to be electric is the equivalent of 30 times Tesla’s output from 2020. One of the things that this would do, is guarantee a large amount of money for electric cars, which will give the assurance to manufacturers to build for this coming demand. With companies like Telsa they can simply ramp up their plans for expansion.
I am fully in support of this change, but time will tell if the European Commission dares to be this bold.