With just under a week to the European Parliament’s environment and public health committee (ENVI) vote on the regulation on car emissions performance standards, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association ACEA) published a study on Tuesday 4 September. The study argues that an ill-prepared and forced transition to electric cars could have serious social implications.
It should be recalled that the rapporteur, Miriam Dalli (S&D, Malta) is proposing to hike up the CO2 emissions reduction target to 25%, with a 50% target in 2030 (as opposed to the Commission's respective targets of 15 and 30%) (see EUROPE 12042). To reach this target, the European institutions and a number of member states would like to prioritise electrically chargeable vehicles.
According to FTI consulting, which carried out the study, a forced transition to an electric battery vehicle market could have “serious” implications for the whole value added chain at both upstream and downstream production levels.
The production of electric vehicles requires much less labour and, above all, much less maintenance, which would have an impact on mechanics, many SMEs and petrol stations. The impact study also indicates that batteries could be imported rather than manufactured on European territory.
The ACEA’s Secretary General, Erik Jonnaert, argues that a reasonable target for 2030 would be 20%. According to the latter, electric cars are “one way ahead, but not the only one”. He added that “We have to look to all the mobility landscape”. In reply to a question put to him by EUROPE, he explained that one option would be to incentivise hybrid cars, particularly “plug-in” hybrid vehicles.
This would be for several reasons: the expansion of the electric car market is still limited (1.5% of the volume of cars sold in 2017) due to the lack of infrastructure and consumer habits; - the hybrid car is a “bridge” towards electric vehicles; hybrid engine technology also has the advantage of requiring more labour upstream and downstream in the manufacturing of electric cars.
Mr Jonnaert also highlighted the existing automobile fleet; he pointed out that incentivising the renewal of old vehicles could substantially reduce CO2 emissions from the transport sector.
The FTI Consulting impact study can be seen at the following address https://bit.ly/2NcQKJA . (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)