Stellantis Pushes for More Pollution & Climate Idiocy in EU
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Some legacy automakers will never change, it seems. Or maybe most of them won’t, but some definitely stand out as the most regressive laggards. Stellantis has certainly fit that bill for as long as I’ve been covering the auto industry.
Year after year after year, automakers in the US and Europe were claiming that consumers just didn’t want electric vehicles, so they shouldn’t be forced to make them. Frankly, I think they would have gotten away with this if it wasn’t for Tesla launching the Model 3, a reasonably affordable mass-market electric car that completely proved them wrong. Well, or so we thought….
Despite the Tesla Model Y becoming the highest selling automobile of any kind worldwide, despite Norway reaching nearly 100% EV adoption, despite China reaching more than 50% plugin vehicle adoption, automakers and their political buddies in Europe have been moving back to the talking points of the early and mid-2010s again in the past year. They got EU fleet emissions requirements watered down a little bit already, but they are pushing for more.
“According to a new report published by Reuters on December 1, the large multinational automaker known as Stellantis is backing the German government’s plea to soften the European Union car emissions rules that are set to take effect in about a decade,” Autoblog writes. So, yeah, this isn’t about watering down or delaying near-term requirements again. Instead, it’s about trying to sneakily slow down progress 10 years ahead of time. Personally, I think this is much worse.
There is no excuse for trying to diminish climate policies a decade in advance. It is purely ignoring climate science and public health science in order to push for more polluting cars when they absolutely will not be needed. It’s Simpsons-like behavior if I’m being honest.
“We welcome the German government’s support for revisions to the European regulations,” noted Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa. According to the parties pushing for this, it’s about an urgent need to get the European auto industry back to growth. That seems to be missing the point that EVs from China are going to come and absolutely eat their lunch if they’re going to go down this route. This is truly Homer Simpson level thinking.
Stellantis Chairman John Elkann also recently argued that the European auto industry would see “irreversible decline” if it didn’t weaken it vehicle emissions requirements. Perhaps Stellantis has a problem. Perhaps it is having trouble developing the most competitive electric vehicles. But, if so, that’s a company leadership problem and a lack of innovation, not a policy problem.
Let’s keep in mind that China is already at more than 50% plugin vehicle sales (33% BEV), while Europe is at 28% (19% BEV). Europe can barely electrify at half the level of China? Europe can’t keep up with technological change nearly as well as China? That’s disappointing. Of course, I don’t buy the arguments Stellantis is putting forward. In fact, I think it’s laughable and sad that Stellantis thinks these arguments are something worth saying out loud, let alone something to build a big lobbying campaign around.
Unfortunately, there is growing momentum around these kinds of appeals to water down the 100% ban on sales of new fossil-powered cars by 2035, with the Italian government also previously pushing for what the German government is pushing for and Renault and Volkswagen previously lobbying along the same lines as Stellantis. Will they succeed in their pollution-pushing agenda?
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