EU carmakers can cope with tightening of CO2 regulations: study

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BERLIN, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Carmakers in the European Union (EU) could cope with the tightening of the regulations introduced by the EU, according to a study by the German Center for Automotive Research (CAR) published on Wednesday.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday that the executive arm of the European Union is proposing to cut emissions by 55 percent from 1990 levels by 2030, in response to the climate emergency.

The new target, which is more ambitious than the 40-percent goal originally set in the Green Deal but falls short of the 60 percent target requested by the European Parliament's environment committee last week, was announced in von der Leyen's first State of Union speech at the European Parliament.

"This is a difficult but feasible path for car manufacturers," said CAR Director Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, "With the tightening of the regulations, emissions will become very expensive and one can assume that small cars will then run mainly on electricity."

Compared to the previous requirement of 62 grams of CO2 per kilometer for average new passenger cars, only 43 grams would be permitted from the year 2030 to meet the new EU target, according to the study.

"According to our model calculation, this would mean that 67 percent of new cars would then have to be fully electric compared to 53 percent according to the previous specifications," Dudenhoeffer stressed.

With a total of 15 million new cars sold in the EU market every year, an additional 2.2 million fully electric cars would have to be sold from 2030 onwards due to the tightening of regulations, according to the study.

Based on an average car battery capacity of 60 kWh, the additional number of electric vehicles would also require lithium-ion for an additional 130 GWh in batteries, according to the study. The costs would sum up to 11 billion euros (13 billion U.S. dollars), which would be "feasible."

Germany's economic stimulus package against the effects of the COVID-19 crisis also included a premium for electric vehicles which was recently doubled so that fully electric cars now receive subsidies of up to 9,000 euros until the end of 2021.

In September, alternative drive types showed "triple-digit growth in some cases" despite overall new passenger car registrations in Germany falling by 20 percent to 250,000 at the same time, according to the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA). (1 euro = 1.18 U.S. dollars) Enditem

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