Essay by Eric Worrall
“… the ideological vision has failed. We need to acknowledge that …”
Italy Seeks Reversal of EU’s 2035 Combustion Engine Ban
By Alberto BrambillaSeptember 07, 2024 at 11:45AM EDT
Bloomberg) — Italian officials said the European Union’s plan to ban sales of new internal combustion engines from 2035 should be reviewed.
“The ban must be changed,” Energy Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said on the sidelines of the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, on the shores of Italy’s Lake Como, on Saturday.
Pichetto Fratin called the decision by the EU “absurd,” and dictated by an “ideological vision” along with a state-controlled approach to policy-making within the bloc. The plan needs changing in order to reflect different market realities amid the European auto industry’s slowdown, he added.
Industry Minister Adolfo Urso also backed a change, urging the incoming European Commission to anticipate the review of the plan to early 2025, from 2026. “In an uncertain landscape which is affecting German automotive industry, clarity is needed to not let the European industry collapse,” Urso said in Cernobbio.
“Europe needs a pragmatic vision, the ideological vision has failed. We need to acknowledge that,” he added.
…
Read more: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/investing/2024/09/07/italy-wants-reversal-of-eus-planned-2035-combustion-engine-ban/
I don’t know how many people would agree that Italy pretty much invented the prestige automobile industry, but they sure played and continue to play a big part in it. The thought they would give up such beauty, such an exquisite quest for perfection, was always a nightmare perpetrated by joyless left wing green ideologues.
Italian prestige automaker Ferrari was an early mover when it came to rejecting EV mandates. Last year they publicly announced their rejection of EV mandates, and in doing so likely saved themselves from sharing the financial pain of their more gullible competitors, most of whom blindly gambled the future financial viability of their businesses on the promises of politicians.
There are other considerations, aside from the fact a lot of people just don’t want an EV.
Europe claims around 11 million EVs, out of a total vehicle ownership around 250 million. Even if Europe somehow convinced every one of the owners of those 250 million vehicles to swap their ICE vehicle for an EV, that would be a lot of extra demand on a grid which is already struggling to maintain winter energy supplies.
Let’s hope the EU surrenders to necessity sooner rather than later.
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BEV technology is not really practical as a replacement for internal combustion vehicles. Of course, hardcore greens oppose motor vehicles in general, so for them, it is a feature, not a bug.
For all the Hoopla about China being a great EV, CC powerhouse, even they can’t get the EV switchover to work
And they’re having Over 21,000 EV fires a year
Population control?
Darwinian theory in operation.
They’d like to share it with you if you’re dumb enough-
Have You Been Scammed with a Counterfeit Tool Battery? (youtube.com)
Hilarious. Presumably none of the huge number of drivers in the video live in apartments without off street parking/charging.
Off to coal fired China with you all for net-zero-
$2 Billion Shortfall Forces Layoffs at Car Battery Factory (msn.com)
The end is nigh alright climate changers!
BMW cancelled the battery order.
So, that is what I am seeing every day… all those people walking to their jobs, and to and from the supermarket, and to their dentist & doctor appts., and…
There’s always the Italexit like the Brexit. Every sovereign country could become so again.
Melonie has spoken about the possibility, Draghi is vehemently against. Harder than BREXIT because Italy is much more integrated into the EU. UK kept the pound, Italy gave up the lira for euros.
It’s practically impossible for Italy. The currency point is just a symptom of the integration over 60 years. Everything in Italy’s economy depends on access to the EU market.
But that’s obvious. The more subtle problem is that Italy has not properly unified, despite Garibaldi. Italy is two countries pretending to be one.
The North is is industrial. It’s full of advanced European cities. Fashion, sophisticated manufacturing (Ferrari have been mentioned) and world-influencing culture emanates from northern Italy.
Rome is also doing well.
But the south is agricultural. It depends on the EU. It has no growth prospects. It’s competing with Türkiye and Greece, not Paris and Stuttgart.
Italexit breaks up Italy.
It isn’t just Italy. Germany’s VW is teetering. Last week they announced three big things because EV sales aren’t there and overall EU new car demand is down since pandemic. And despite the political uproar, they haven’t (yet) blinked.
I worked in the Tier 1 auto suppliers, the OEM’s too great delight in using cheap Chinese prices to force lower prices on the Tier 1’s destroying the workforce in the west and forcing the suppliers to relocate to China. Now it happening to them, not got any sympathy.
Yes. The recent German imposition of proper border controls is the start of something big in the EU. Its obviously in response to the AfD’s win in Thuringia, but what they are running scared of is how the AfD may do in Brandenburg on September 22.
Its very hard to see how this works out, but we can see some quite dark possibilities looming up in the mist. Its unlikely that the combination of net zero adopted at an EU level coupled with mass migration on the recent scale is sustainable. That is, if the combination is persisted with at a European level, it will probably lead to election of parties like Le Pen’s or AfD.
The adoption of the Euro however has probably ruled out any further exits. You must be right in saying that Britain could only leave because it had never signed up to the Euro.
So the most likely near future seems to be national defiance of Brussels on both immigration and net zero. That will probably lead to a weakening of Brussels’ stance on both. Brussels has a long habit of fudging things and sacrificing principles in order to keep the show somehow on the road.
But its getting harder all the time. They would probably be able to carry on indefinitely were it not for the self inflicted damage of immigration and net zero. Now? its not at all sure. It is clear that there are many people who have moved to EU countries who simply don’t accept the culture of the country they have moved to, and that their number is rising. At some point this is liable to lead to an explosion. Especially in Germany and France. Germany is saying that the abolition of Schengen is only for six months. Wishful thinking – no government with any eye on the electorate is going to reinstate open borders after six months.
Once Schengen has gone, and gone in this way – as a result of defiance by a national government – the whole scope of the project will be called into question. Debit limits will be the next crisis point.
So watch out on September 22, Brandenburg. The AfD is already too large to ignore. It may shortly be too large to exclude, and after that, this being Germany, all bets are off.
Combustion engines run on stored sun energy. Petroleum was originally created by photo synthesis in the form of various green herbs, flowers, bushes, algea, trees etc which eventually got fossilized through heat an high pressure. By burning oil and gas we are just recycled CO2 into new CO2which plays an insignificant role driving climate!
“new CO2 which plays an insignificant role driving climate!”
How true that is… never been observed or measured… immeasurable.
Except in CliSciFi models unhinged from the real climate. All except for the Russian models still predict the non-existent Tropospheric Hot Spot. The fear-mongers continue to ignore the 2021 UN IPCC Assessment Report’s WGI (Scientific Basis) clear assessment that there is no worsening of the Earth’s extreme weather events since the advent of accurate recordkeeping.
Always remember: Your governments lie to you continuously about things both great and small. Ideology rules political decision-making to the detriment of common citizens … YOU!
Ideology and especially emotion, controls public opinion. Politicians, e.g., Harris, blow like a flag in the wind of public opinion. Their only interest is being elected/re-elected, not what is doing the greatest good for the greatest number and protecting the public from the government.
You describe coal. I have not seen a good article on the origin of oil and gas.
Dead algae, plankton, other ocean flora sink to the bottom, subduct, and with water, intense heat, and pressure becomes methane and oil.
This can be replicated in the lab.
I frankly don’t know how the EU still exists. Other nations need to leave the EU for their own good. The EU is sucking them dry for no good purpose. If the richer European nations want to help the poorer European nations any other plan would be better than the EU. It has to go.
in my opinion, having lived in Europe for almost. 6 years and h aging gone back almost monthly for decades since, the situation is not stable. Immigration, imbalanced country level deficit spending, unelected EU bureaucrat quality of life changing mandates, just keep piling on.
It sure looks like a bad thing to me.
Germany is talking of hard borders to control immigration upsetting the bureaucracy in Brussels.
Greece has managed to greatly reduce immigration by building a wall on its border with Turkey and turning back small boats. The ECHR doesn’t seem to have stopped Greece doing this.
“Phasing out” Lamborghini and Ferrari V12s is a criminal act that cannot be tolerated in a civilized society.
I say they up the ante, and start making V16s and V20s.
Story Tip
EU automakers could face 15 billion euros fine for not selling enough EVs
https://tinyurl.com/eaabybd7
**********
This makes absolutely zero sense to me. The EU automakers cannot force European car buyers to buy EVs at gunpoint unless the automakers eliminate making ICE vehicles altogether. Green eco-Marxist central planning.
The carmakers will simply constrain supply of ICE vehicles until they meet their quotas, meaning longer and longer waits for new ICE vehicles, we’re starting to see this in the UK already.
The other logical move is for the manufacturers to exit the volume market and focus instead on the high margin/low volume sector, so if you have $100,000 to spend on an SUV, no problem, but if your budget stretches to a fraction of that, get used to walking.
“meaning longer and longer waits for new ICE vehicles”…
That’s fine with me. My vehicles are 18yrs., 30yrs., and an ‘older’ 1985 pickup used for the several steps to gathering our wood stove ‘winter supplies’. They are all still performing their designed functions, and we don’t have to line up at charging stations.
China’s Too Hot, No Power! 750,000 EV Owners Suffer, Queuing 10 Hours, Can’t Charge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRx6Q9f-2Is
A sad view of the future for all of us should the EV push continue
OOPS! Someone earlier beat me to it
worth watching… will it change any minds?
Chevrolet says they are going to be producing a new Corvette for 2025 with an internal combustion engine that is rated at 1,012 horsepower.
American manufacturers are not going down the EV road, they are producing bigger and better internal combustion engines and spending billions of dollars doing so.
The Internal Combustion Engine is alive and well.
IMO 1000+ hp is a bit excessive in a street car—indeed any car. Formula 1 ‘only’ runs about 850.
The biggest class 8 18 wheelers are at most 600 if they have to go over the Rockies on every long haul, towing 80k#. More typical is 400.
The biggest diesel farm tractors run about 250. Most are under 200. My farm biggest was 180. My smallest was 27 but AWD for haying. Also ran an old ~60hp for hay baling, green corn silage mulching, and such.
For sure don’t buy one ;^}
Excessive is the name of the game. It’s not about what you need, but what you want.
HP on its own is meaningless, its power to weight ratio that counts. A 1000Hp motor in a container ship would be useless but 60hp in a 400lb motorcycle will do 0 to 60 in 4 secs.
“IMO 1000+ hp is a bit excessive in a street car—indeed any car.”
I agree. Four hundred horsepower is as much as any normal person needs. I had a GMC Yukon with about 410 horsepower and the engine moved the big SUV along smartly.
Anything more than that is just for thrill seekers.
But diesels (truck and tractor) are torque monsters, so excel in those roles.
What would you do with a 1,012 hp car? My sports car has only 471 hp and is electronically limited to a top speed of 168 mph. I would imagine the corvette would leave me in the dust acceleration-wise, but accelerating with 1,012 hp would give new meaning to ‘burning rubber’. Tires aren’t cheap.
I wouldn’t buy a 1,000 horsepower Corvette. My “need for speed” is in the past. Now, I just want to get from Point A to Point B as safely as possible.
I think the desire of these auto companies is to be able to compete with electric vehicle acceleration, so they need about 1,000 horsepower to get that done.
They can have best of both worlds with gasoline-electric drive hybrids (see Honda). They just need to stop chasing mega mpg numbers (read: engines need to be bigger and more powerful).
“The Internal Combustion Engine is alive and well.” But subject to extinction at the whim of ideological Leftist/Marxist politicians and Deep State operatives. While you can’t force people to buy EVs you can outlaw ICEs and/or drive their prices above that affordable to the common driver.
The Indianapolis 500, or the Formula 1 races, with EV’s? “Gentlemen, start your engines.” Just wouldn’t be the same without the roar of power.
(Spent a Saturday afternoon at Loward race track west of Brisbane in the late 1950’s. Just the once, not particularly “interesting”.)
I know EVs can go fast and have great acceleration etc…
But how quickly does an EV chew through the battery at racing speeds ?
Would an Indianapolis “100” be more to their liking.. or still too far ?
Faster speeds = faster battery drawdown.
Would a ‘pit stop’ involve changing a battery? Would the shock of being dropped onto concrete from a height of possibly two feet have any effect?
I knew from the get go it was a bad idea that would never fly, what kind of crackpots think of this crap? I know leftists, they are WAAY to idealistic, impractical.
The Wiki link says the highest EV penetration in Europe and Asia are Norway and Nepal respectively both having abundant hydro electricity generation 🤔 can that be coincidental⸮
Yes and both relatively small countries.
Norway built support for EV use by using generous ‘incentives’ financed by its Sovereign Wealth Fund accumulated from its offshore oil and gas fields
Thanks for that! Do they remind their people of that fact?
Interestingly, in the article, I could find none of the words/acronyms “science,” “climate,” or “IPCC.”
Why is Italy the only country to understand reality?
Because theirs is not a country rich enough to survive this nonsense in the short term.