Julia Poliscanova, senior director for clean vehicles at T&E, said: “Electric car sales are booming thanks to EU emissions standards. Next year, one in every seven cars sold in Europe will be a plug-in. EU manufacturers are back in the EV race, but without more ambitious CO₂ targets in 2025 and 2030 to spur them on, they’ll run out of steam as soon as 2022.”

PSA Group, Volvo, FCA-Tesla and BMW Group are already complying with the EU’s target for average emissions of new cars, based on their sales in the first half of 2020, T&E’s analysis shows. Renault, Nissan, the Toyota-Mazda pool and Ford have a small gap to close of 2 grams of CO₂ per km. The sales of the Zoe alone in 2020 will knock off 15g of CO₂ to help ensure Renault complies.

While further away, the Volkswagen Group (5g), Hyundai-Kia (7g-3g), Daimler (9g) and Jaguar-Land Rover (13g) should cross the line either through their compliance strategies of selling more plug-in vehicles, by pooling emissions with other companies, or both. Daimler is expected to close much of the gap by selling more of its plug-in hybrids, including the E-Class, C-Class, A-Class and GLC – sales of which have grown rapidly this year.

But while electric cars’ market share will go from 3% to 10% this year, and to 15% next year, we may expect to see it at only 20% four years later if the current CO₂ regulation is not revised, the analysis shows. Norway shows how fast the EV market can grow: from 6% of sales in 2013 to almost 50% five years later, in 2018.

Worryingly, sales of lucrative but highly-polluting SUVs crept up to 39% in the first half of 2020. This is encouraged by a loophole in the EU regulation whereby selling heavy vehicles actually gives carmakers laxer CO₂ targets. Also, half of all the electric cars sold today are “fake electric” plug-in hybrids that are rarely charged and emit 2-4 times more CO₂ in the real world than the lab tests show.[1] T&E said the EU needed to set 2035, at the latest, as the end date for sales of combustion engines – including current PHEV technology.

Julia Poliscanova concluded: “The electric car is finally entering the mainstream in Europe but SUV sales are still growing like weeds. The only way to kill off highly-polluting vehicles is to give carmakers a clear end date now. Cars that run on biofuels, fake electric engines or fossil gas emit CO₂ and shouldn’t be allowed on the market after 2035.”

Notes to editor:

[1] See: The ICCT, Real-world usage of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles: Fuel consumption, electric driving, and CO₂ emissions, (2020).

https://theicct.org/publications/phev-real-world-usage-sept2020

Also: T&E, UK briefing: The plug-in hybrid con, (2020).

https://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/uk-briefing-plug-hybrid-con