By P Gosselin
After vote in Brussels last Monday evening, a majority of the European Parliament favored a Commission proposal that would no longer automatically classify electric cars as climate-neutral vehicles.
In the proposal, the CO2 emissions of electric cars would depend on the electricity mix used to charge the car, meaning electric cars would not necessarily be classified as “electric only”.
The EU plans to reassess the phase-out of combustion engines, based on the latest data and developments.
So what has brought on this sudden episode of political sobriety in Brussels? Probably a good dose of reality. Here are 4 possible reasons behind the EU’s new position:
1. China
The automotive industry and many EU states warn of the economic and social consequences of a ban on combustion engines.
Electric car production in Europe cannot compete with the far lower costs in China. Europe’s car production would move overseas, and thus result hundreds of thousands of lost jobs – and lots of social unrest.
Currently Europe is already gripped by social unrest as farmers and truckers protest in the streets against radical green policies.
2. E-car emissions cheating
Currently, electric cars in the EU are given a CO2 emission rating of zero grams! This zero emissions claim is a lie in most cases as the calculation doesn’t take true electricity generation mix into account. Fossil fuels are still widely used in Europe to produce the electric power.
A true accounting would include the CO2 emissions of the electricity used to charge electric cars and make them look less attractive.
3. Climate-neutral fuels (e-fuels):
Efforts are being made to run combustion engines on climate-neutral fuels (e-fuels), which are produced from renewable energies and are thus CO2-neutral.
The EU Commission wants to examine whether newly registered vehicles with combustion engines that run on e-fuels can be registered from 2035. This would effectively suspend the ban on combustion engines, as e-fuels can be used emissions-free in practice.
4. The 2024 European Parliament election
It is scheduled to be held on 6 to 9 June 2024. So now is not the time to upset voters with unpopular legislation. The Brussels bureaucrats probably just want citizens to think they are being pragmatic and will not take a radical course after all.
In summary, the EU may be realizing that banning internal combustion engines, and replacing them with e-cars, is going to cause a lot more damage than good.
Governments are ignorant but the common guy can educate them, the sooner the better.
Sobering EU up will leave a bad hangover.
The hangover headache is caused by the alcohol dehydrating brain cells. If you drink copious amounts of water, the effect is greatly reduced if not completely eliminated. I doubt that will help the EU, as it isn’t alcohol they are drunk on.
Classifying cars by the type of electricity used, good grief! Electricity is almost more fungible than money. It’s hard to think of a more clueless bureaucratic boondoggle.
Not when you use e-lectrons.
It’s #4, or rather a specific subset of #4. Self-preservarion. Bear in mind that no mature bureaucracy ever works for the benefit of the people they are suppised to work for. A mature bureaucracy only ever works for itself. And the EU is a very mature bureaucracy.
“And the EU is a very mature bureaucracy.”
Bureaucracies become “very mature” very quickly. The EU was only established in November 1993.
But it was the linear descendent of the “Common Market” (more properly the EEC) founded in 1957 by the Treaty of Rome.
The US has been around since 1776–or 1788-1789. 1957 is still young. However, much of Europe has been around for centuries, so bureaucracies had lots of time to form behind the scenes–you’re not exactly incorrect.
Oh goody. I was born in 1947 so I’m still young!
You’re older than me–but not by much.
And I was born in 1948, so feeling really young right now.
Thank God, for that, I’m four years younger than you, that makes me a whipper-snapper 😊
Anybody who says whipper-snapper is no where close to young!
😄
Matured from the 1930s/40s Germany, Italy and France – if you get my drift – whose bureaucracies coalesced into the European Coal & Steel Community 1951, the European Economic Community 1958, then the EU 1993, the precursor to a Federal State of Europe. Old habits, etc…
John, you missed the subtle step, of the European Community (EC).
That was my thinking.
Turkeys don’t vote for Xmas!
I’d say that the EU is more entrenched as opposed to mature – there are too many back handed deals hence a lot of skeletons in the cupboard!
“a lot of skeletons in the cupboard”. Well, that dwarfs the Paris catacombs. 😊
Of course it’s nr 4. But remember it is always 2 steps forward and just 1 step back. So they are still moving in the wrong direction.
There are no good cancers.
“So they are still moving in the wrong direction.”
That’s the bottom line.
They can’t decide which direction the want to move in – Brussels to Strasbourg for four days then back to Brussels every month at a cost of €114m per year plus emissions 🙂
I thought that they also spent time in Lux City. Have they dropped that from their rotation?
As far as I can tell they only move from Brussels to Strasbourg and back. Perhaps in the past they were on the road for longer 🙂
But let us remember that, should the entrenched powers-that-be be returned to office, then can change their minds in an instant.
Let’s not forget that CO2 levels have a negligible effect on global temperatures
Heretic! Greta will un-follow you!
Yes, Europe (the whole Western world really) is destroying itself over the “negligible effect” of CO2.
There is no evidence CO2 is harmful in any way, yet they destroy themselves over it. It’s a mental illness.
Happy people don’t vote for socialism.
That’s why their goal is to destroy the economy.
I’ve probably said this before but it is worth repeating.
Using the average mix of generation types is inaccurate in measuring how much CO2 an ev causes in charging it’s battery.
Any extra demand on the grid which evs must be (and heat pumps also) means that dispatchable generation increases to meet that extra load. renewables and nuclear generally just can’t respond.
In most countries this is fossil fuelled generation and increases in proportion to the extra load.
In other words evs are almost entirely powered by fossil fuelled electricity.
Not to mention all of the energy inputs into making EVs, windmills, solar panels and batteries come from fossil fuels.
Treating any of this worse-than-useless garbage like it requires or produces no “emissions” is absolutely false.
That’s true because all wind and solar produced electrons are miraculously filtered out and siphoned off to customers signed up to 100% green electricity retailers.
I can not find anything about voting in favor Of the comb.engine on the eu site.
can anybody help.
Quote without comment:
The burnings at the stake will follow very shortly afterward.
Jim – only if the resulting CO2 is captured and stored….
Correction.
“Anyone who sells a product would need to explain how or if it causes global warming.”
Entertainment tax would need to be charged when reading the results.
“Entertainment tax . . . .”
They tax everything nowadays.
Ever heard of the bedspring tax?
As I recall, when clocks first came out, in the UK they tried to tax “time”.
There are some very stupid people at Oxford University.
Radical leftism like we have at Oxford, attracts stupid people. They wouldn’t be radical leftists if they weren’t stupid.
“So anyone who sells a product that causes global warming would need to explain how they are going to stop it causing global warming”.
Well, first *you* have to explain how some product related to CO2 causes global warming.
You are assuming CO2 causes identifiable global warming, but there’s no evidence backing up that claim, so the onus is on you to prove CO2 causes any harmful global warming. You and your fellow climate alarmists assume too much. You are living in a false CO2 reality. Wake up and snap out of it! You’ll feel better afterwards.
First, let’s see the empirical evidence that anything *they say* causes global warming ACTUALLY CAUSES it. And let’s also see their proof for the notion that a COLDER climate is BETTER THAN a warmer climate.
One of the other reasons they are reflecting on the all Electric motoring future is the shortage of fire fighters and the expected need for increasing fire fighters if battery power becomes ubiquitous in the coming years……
Burns are a horrible way to die. That’s why I think arsonists have earned a special place in Hell. That goes for witch burners double.
But I’ll excuse those who want to burn idiots like Myles Allen. Idiots like that will kill vast numbers of people to advance their eco-zealotry.
Off topic… The one thing I haven’t yet seen, but expect to, is an EV driving down the road dragging a broken off charging cord.
Sounds like someone with exceptional experience in dragging broken off hoses.
No, just an old guy who has seen many strange things in public over his lifetime.
Maybe there’s some sort of interlock to prevent the throttle working if the charging socket has a plug in it? I wouldn’t know; I don’t own one of these infernal machines…
If not, there should be. Wonder if the EV manufacturers do a full Failure Modes and Effects Criticality Analysis (FMECA)?
You haven’t seen it because on my PHEV you cannot start the car if the charging cable is plugged in.
Unlike those dangerous ICE’s where you can drive off with the fuel nozzle in the fuel filler pipe. That is why they have break away hoses on gas pumps.
Mack MD Electric heavy trucks are being produced and introduced to several customers. No word on if a version built for towing and retrieval of other electric trucks is on its way.
A very small number of virtue signalling units. Tesla has only built around 100 of their EV trucks and they aren’t taking the world by storm.
Because they are ugly. (I saw one the other day.)
I saw a Cybertruck in person for the first time. Having driven a pickup for about 10 years, I wondered how you could actually use that ugly thing.
Apparently all motor vehicles become ugly as they age, like some people. That must be why auto salvage yards are required to be surrounded with fences.
Don’t Fence Me In! But that song was recorded before every singer who sang it became old and ugly.
Yes, it will be diesel powered.
“Efforts are being made to run combustion engines on climate-neutral fuels (e-fuels), which are produced from renewable energies and are thus CO2-neutral.”
Unicorn farts again.
Calculations to derermine that stuff is “carbon neutral” are magnificent examples of sophistry.
They are downright magical thinking. Without the energy inputs from fossil fuels, there simply is no energy aside from manual labor.
e-fuels. The latest mirage.
So once again virtue signaling hits the wall of reality. As the green edicts come closer to implementation people realize there’s no way they’ll be realized without catastrophic results. Total wind and solar electricity generation without reliable and affordable storage? People still believe it possible and even tout it.
It’s not just about how the electricity is generated, because lots of “emissions” are used to produce EVs, not to mention windmills, solar panels and batteries.
So why don’t they just give up or mandate we return transport and farming to being horse, donkey and ox powered and get it over with.
Farmers convert hydrocarbons into carbohydrates by using diesel for plowing, planting, cultivating, harvesting, and transporting the produce to market. Likewise. they use fertilizers and sprays from the HC based petrochemical industry. The most gross stupidity in energy is then using coal or natural gas for fermenting perfectly good corn into ethanol for use as a transportation fuel. Reverse engineering if there ever was any: Converting a carbohydrate back into a hydrocarbon replacement!
Is it any wonder that if the EU is dumb enough to encourage that it is equally dumb enough to think a modern society can run on sunshine and breezes?
Ethanol consumes more energy than it yields as transportation fuel.
Apparently, Ford (US), have filed a patent for an enhancement to ICEs, that improves on the emissions and improves performance. Obviously they are hedging their bets.
Looking at the global EV scenario, China, has the upper hand, it has access to vast lithium sources (through acquisitions), and using FF source electrical power, and can build EVs cheaper than European manufacturers.
So, wouldn’t it make economic sense, for Europe to concentrate on producing more ICE’s with enhanced emissions, and consign EVs to the local town runabout? Thereby killing off China’s dominance in the EV market?
Consumers began seeing the light on the limitations of EVs far in advance of governments who were more easily brainwashed by the environmental alarmists. Now that they see slumping sales and a recharging infrastructure deficit besides providing massive taxpayer-funded subsidies for a product that has far less appeal than its proponents claimed, they’re backing off on it because they don’t want to be stuck with a lot of white elephants. The fact that the producers were cutting output was another factor that caused the bureaucrats to curb their enthusiasm.