Motorists in Paris, France. The European Union said it would back away from a landmark pledge to ban emissions from new vehicles in 2035. Photo / Anna Kurth, AFP
The petrol-powered car is outlasting the policies that had aimed to banish it.
A prime example of the combustion engine’s staying power came yesterday, when the European Union said it would back away from a landmark pledge to ban emissions from new vehicles in 2035.
That announcement came one day after Ford said it would scale back electric vehicle production plans, joining a long list of American and European automakers to rethink climate strategies.
Those retreats, taken together, show that the full-on electric transition is far less certain than it might have looked several years ago - and that polluting cars and trucks could remain on roads across Europe and America for decades to come.
The moves also sharpen the contrast between the West and China, which has developed a massive and lucrative EV market supplied by state-backed automakers.
In the US, where President Donald Trump has portrayed electric cars as an expensive “scam”, the White House has cut EV incentives and this month announced plans to weaken fuel efficiency standards for new cars and trucks.
European officials say they favour a future that is mostly electric, and many countries still have EV incentives in place.
Brussels faced intense pressure from the continent’s automakers to dilute the 2035 ban.
Those legacy carmakers, with huge workforces and factories built around combustion engines, have struggled to compete with China’s low-cost, high-quality EVs.
The revised proposal will force carmakers to meet 90% fleetwide emissions reductions compared with 2021 levels.
That means most vehicles will be fully electric. But it also leaves room for hybrids - including those with a plug-in option - and fuel vehicles.
“We’re introducing some flexibilities for manufacturers,” the EU’s climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, said at a news conference.
While there remain good reasons to revere the petrol-powered car - its history, its motor-revving power - passenger cars and vans account for about 10% of the global carbon dioxide emissions.
Cutting emissions in other sectors, such as shipping or aviation, require huge and technically difficult transformations. With cars, the technology is already available.
Ferdinand Dudenhoffer, the director of the Centre Automotive Research in Bochum, Germany, said he sees the world’s auto industry splintering into three parts.
One in the US, fully supportive of fuel cars. One in China, all in on EVs. And another in Europe, where policies are now muddled.
He said Chinese automakers are likely to benefit most from that dynamic, because the Chinese market dwarfs those in the US and Europe and looks to keep growing - and electrifying.
American and European markets have had a hard time splitting from the petrol-powered vehicles, because combustion engines have higher profit margins.
That strategy leaves them in a long-term bind.
“In the future, China will define the rules of the car industry,” Dudenhoffer said.
With a licence to keep producing petrol vehicles, he said, Western manufacturers “earn some kind of short-term windfall. But in the long term, they lose a lot.
“The advantages of the Chinese carmakers will be larger and larger.”
Ford, in its announcement, said it was seeking out “higher-return opportunities” by expanding petrol and hybrid options. It said it would put a hold on production of its flagship EV, the F-150 Lightning.
Carmakers such as Volvo and Porsche have also pulled back from more ambitious EV plans. Earlier this year, Stellantis, which includes the Jeep and Fiat brands, shifted away from plans to be fully electric in Europe by 2030.
The petrol vehicle ban had been a cornerstone of Europe’s much-heralded climate plan, introduced four years ago as officials cited the “generational task” of saving the planet.
At the time, EU leaders said they had put the continent’s car industry - which accounts for 7% of Europe’s gross domestic product - at the forefront of innovation by creating a clear future target.
Officials also had reasoned that a 2035 ban would allow an additional 15 years to phase out older petrol and diesel vehicles from the roads, in line with the EU’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.
But large automakers - including Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and BMW - have seen their market value nose-dive. In a strategic error, the EVs they produced tended to be high-end, not for the mass market.
When the European Parliament shifted rightward in elections last year, the momentum to water down the 2035 policy grew. In the meantime, leaders in Germany and Italy described the target as a danger to European jobs.
“Such a hard cutoff in 2035 will not take place, if I have anything to do with it,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz had said.
Matthias Schmidt, an auto industry analyst, said that high-end automakers like Porsche, BMW and Mercedes had struggled to make the case for EVs.
“Their core customer base has been more interested in the mechanical prowess and the engineering of a sports car,” Schmidt said. “This gives them a licence to continue going forward.”
European carmakers are also now rolling out more affordable EV models. But the fastest-growing EV seller on the continent - though starting from a small scale - is Chinese company BYD, which saw sales skyrocket 300% in the first nine months this year, according to industry data.
European automakers also rely on components made in China, given its dominance in batteries and in the crucial minerals that go into them.
The plan unveiled yesterday by the European Commission stated that fleet emissions from 2035 onward would need to be “compensated” with other measures, such as the use of low-carbon steel made within the bloc. E-fuels or biofuels could also be used.
The proposal must still be discussed and approved by the European Parliament and by EU member states.
Stephane Sejourne, the EU’s commissioner for industrial policy, said Europe was not abandoning its decarbonisation plans.
“We’re taking a pragmatic approach to the economic and geopolitical situation,” he said.
However, the European Green Party blasted the move to weaken the target and said it was undermining Europe’s long-term climate goals.
“Climate neutrality cannot be achieved with half-measures or loopholes for polluting technologies,” said Vula Tsetsi, the party’s co-chair.
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