Status: 27.09.2023, 09:30 a.m.
By: Sebastian Oppenheimer
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Not everyone can make friends with the ban on combustion engines from 2035. Now, for the first time, a German company wants to go to court against it.
The fact that not all EU ideas meet with approval is just shown by the push for a tightening of driving licence rules. On the other hand, it has already been decided that from 2035 only emission-free passenger cars may be newly registered in the EU – basically, this decision means the end for diesel and petrol engines. This, too, does not trigger enthusiasm everywhere. A German company now wants to sue against the combustion engine phase-out, as the Welt am Sonntag (Wams) reports. It sounds "nice to only allow emission-free cars," Lorenz Kiene, head of the Lühmann Group, told the paper. However, the EU's plan is "driven by ideology, not facts."
German company wants to overturn EU regulation at least in part
According to the report, the Lühmann Group, which is also active in the trade in synthetic fuels, criticises the fact that the EU only considers cars that do not emit exhaust gases to be emission-free. But emissions cannot only be measured at the tailpipe – instead, CO₂ emissions must be considered over the entire life cycle of a car. The aim now is to overturn parts of the EU regulation adopted in March.
A German company wants to sue against the combustion engine phase-out. (Symbolic image) © Geisser/Imago
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Synthetic fuels: Safe for 28 million vehicles, according to Stellantis
However, the door is still open for e-fuels: At Germany's insistence, combustion vehicles that only use climate-neutral fuels are to be allowed to be newly registered after 2035. The car company Stellantis recently declared after a test with e-fuels that the synthetic fuels were safe for 28 million vehicles of its own 14 brands. The problem: Technically, it is difficult to ensure that a car has actually been completely refueled with e-fuels only.
Synthetic fuels are also not without controversy: efficiency is one of the disadvantages – a lot of energy falls by the wayside when converting electricity into e-fuels. Porsche, for example, started producing e-fuels at a plant in Chile at the end of 2022. At the moment, however, only relatively small quantities of synthetic fuels are produced – this means that the prices per litre for e-fuels are still high and will probably remain so for the time being.
