As of: February 29, 2024, 2:39 p.m
By: Lars-Eric Nievelstein
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Between 2021 and 2030, cars should gradually reduce their emissions by 55 percent.
One of these steps is coming in 2025.
This could be difficult for the car manufacturer Volkswagen.
Wolfsburg – Volkswagen is currently fighting on several fronts.
Recently there have been repeated reports of the alleged use of forced labor in the car manufacturer's joint ventures in Xinjiang, China, and sales of electric cars in Spain are not going as planned.
A “Performance Program” is intended to save billions by 2026 – in materials, in development, in personnel.
And then there are the CO₂ regulations from the European Union, which will become stricter in 2025.
Reduction for CO2 emissions per vehicle set by the EU |
15 percent (compared to 2021) |
|---|---|
Fines to be paid to the EU for non-compliance |
95 euros for every gram of CO₂ per kilometer above the fleet target value per car |
Average carbon dioxide emissions from VW cars (2023) |
118.4 grams per kilometer driven (Handelsblatt) |
Gap between actual emissions from German manufacturers and the information provided |
14 percent (ICCT) |
Fit for 55 – This is how the EU wants to limit CO₂ emissions
The European Union's plan calls for greenhouse gas emissions within the EU to fall by at least 55 percent by 2030.
There are a variety of measures to achieve this - in the automotive sector it is the gradual increase in emissions reduction targets.
Specifically, a fleet limit of 130 grams of carbon dioxide emitted per kilometer driven has been in effect across Europe since 2015; since 2021, the limit has been 95 grams per kilometer driven.
Logo of the automobile manufacturer VW Volkswagen on a building.
Between 2021 and 2030, cars should gradually reduce their emissions by 55 percent.
This could be tight for Volkswagen.
© IMAGO / Horst Galuschka
In 2025, the EU will tighten these requirements again.
Compared to 2021, cars must reduce their CO₂ emissions by 15 percent.
The upper limit is 93.6 grams of CO₂ emitted per kilometer by 2029.
The final stage will follow in 2030 - then CO₂ emissions must be reduced by 55 percent compared to 2021.
Volkswagen and the expansion of electromobility
Volkswagen is scheduled to publish its annual report for the past year in mid-March.
Industry experts expect positive results when it comes to CO₂ fleet targets: vehicles delivered in the EU are expected to produce 118.4 grams per kilometer driven for the year.
However, in view of the impending reduction in the CO₂ emissions plan in 2025, VW is facing a problem.
In order to achieve the expected reduction, the car manufacturer from Wolfsburg would have to significantly increase the sales share of its electric cars.
“If we don’t get the numbers up quickly, we’ll be running into a huge CO2 problem in 2025,” Handelsblatt quoted
an
insider.
Volkswagen had set itself the goal of being “completely CO₂-neutral as a company” by 2050.
A current analysis by the major Swiss bank UBS goes in a similar direction, according to which Volkswagen and Renault in particular need to increase their pace when it comes to the shift to electromobility.
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Fines for emissions that are too high
Sales of electromobility are actually not necessarily going according to plan at VW.
In Spain, for example, VW had invested a lot of money in the VW subsidiary Seat, but sales left much to be desired.
According to studies, Spaniards are simply not prepared to pay more than 28,000 euros for a new car.
Seat boss Wayne Griffiths expressed
concerns about this development to
Automotive News Europe .
For the automaker, it looks like it will have to choose the lesser of two evils.
Either the company increases its production of electric cars, regardless of losses.
Or he works for the greatest possible profit, which currently simply comes from the combustion engines, but in doing so he risks paying fines to the European Union.
And they have it all: from 2025, manufacturers will have to pay.
German car manufacturers are lagging behind
However, VW is not the only manufacturer struggling with the CO₂ regulations.
As the research organization International Council of Clean Transportation (ICCT) announced, the gap between actual CO₂ emissions and manufacturer information is increasing across the industry.
In 2022 it was 14 percent for cars registered in Germany.
This means that the actual emissions were 14 percent higher than the emissions stated by the manufacturers.
The trend is rising: in 2018 the difference was still eight percent on average.
To do this, the ICCT evaluated official emissions data from the European Environment Agency (EEA) and compared it with the real fuel consumption data of more than 160,000 cars, limited to combustion engines and conventional hybrid vehicles.
In the past, various car manufacturers had used other measures to somehow avoid the emissions penalty - and, among other things, triggered the emissions scandal.