Welcome to another Transport Vlog.
Now this week on the agenda:
cars.
Ironically enough on Brussels car free day.
There will of course now be hundreds of cars go by
in order to undermine my point.
The magic of television, huh?
But this week,
there's a new climate plan in the EU.
How does that affect the transport sector?
We'll get into that and the 2020 targets for car makers.
3 1/2 months to go.
How much work have they got to do?
We'll talk about that as well.
Last week European Commission decided
that it will be a 55% emissions reduction target overall
instead of a 40% emissions reduction target.
Now this needs to be agreed by legislators and everything
but we can take it as read that this is now the new baseline.
but that means extra work for across the board sectors
of power, transport, agriculture and so on and so on.
The Commission is already indicating that
the 2030 car emission reduction target,
37.5 by 2030
will have to be increased.
Now it's got the legal power to do this
because there's a review period built into the rules as it is
but the rumblings in the hallways and various drafts that are going around
suggest that this will be a 50 emissions reduction target instead.
Now, these rules were only agreed last year
and it took negotiations that were brutal.
Member states wanted a certain thing,
MEPs wanted another thing.
There were exemptions flying around, loopholes,
I want this, I want that
and eventually they got a compromise.
To already review this and to put a huge target 50 on it
seems extremely ambitious.
On the one hand, car makers will be livid
and absolutely against this because they say it's changing the rules
they've, you know, they've just got used to this 37.5 target,
it's moving the goal posts, it's not fair.
But on the other hand, national governments
are taking climate agendas more seriously.
This European Commission has built
its entire raison d'être on the Green Deal.
It has to make cuts somewhere
and cars, seemingly more and more,
seem like an easy place to do that.
So 50%, well probably if it comes to light comes to fruition,
everything's on the table after all,
there will be more exemptions, there will be more loopholes.
They'll be pushing for a smaller target in certain quarters
but it's not implausible.
So this is one to keep an eye on
and this is probably going to be done
some point by next June.
It's a lot of work to be done,
a lot of numbers to be crunched.
The likelihood of this going through anytime soon is probably
it's not very easy to put a number on the legislative process, right?
But something like a year, two years
is the sort of time period we're probably looking at.
But they've got more clear and present dangers, right?
Coronavirus is probably going to scrub
new car registrations in Europe by something like 20% this year
and the likes of VW and others
were banking on strong electric car sales in this part of the year
to bring down their fleet average
and therefore allow them to meet the 2020 target.
But, as i just said, that isn't happening
at the scale that they predicted previously.
So some are in real danger of missing this 2020 target and
getting the huge fines that come with it.
Some like your Peugeots, your Renaults
are already compliant because of the cars they make,
it's quite easy to make them a little bit greener.
That's why well VW has entered into
this pooling agreement with a chinese company that makes electric cars
so that their statistics get nice and merged,
brings the fleet number down.
They can probably be compliant now.
But they're also probably thinking just
a little bit further ahead,
again because of the Commission's new thinking,
to 2025 because there's an interim target as well.
If that gets ratcheted up, that's only four years away!
And these alliances, these agreements - they're lucrative.
Fiat Chrysler already entered into one with Tesla.
Hundreds of millions of euros a year that's worth .
But they can't overlap.
So if these car makers need to find
their best friends in the electric car sector
in order to you know take their data
and make sure that their emissions are at a low level
these agreements are going to come in thick and fast.
The big players are going to take where they can.
I mean, VW is calling this as insurance policy
and that is probably what it's going to be for a lot of these players.
And again: 3 1/2 months, ticking away.
Big fines.
And also they have to think about the future.
So there we go.
Who would be an auto executive, huh?
Not me.
Thank you for tuning in, tune in again next week.
Who knows where i'll be then?
Some different park, maybe.
You'll have to tune in find out.
Thanks for joining me.
Ciao for now!