By Paul Homewood
AOL also cover the story:
Automakers are feeling the pressure to go electric, both to stay relevant and to avoid massive financial penalties. Governments, especially in Europe, are tightening emissions rules, forcing legacy brands to rethink how they build and sell cars. For giants like Volkswagen Group, the stakes are getting expensive.
Despite a strong push into electric vehicles, VW still isn’t moving fast enough to meet regulatory targets. That gap between ambition and reality could now cost the company up to $1.7 billion in fines. It’s a harsh reminder that the transition to electrification isn’t as smooth or as profitable as many expected.
At the core of the issue is a fundamental imbalance. Combustion-engine cars still bring in more profit, while EVs are essential for lowering fleet emissions. Trying to balance both without losing money has become one of the biggest challenges in the modern auto industry.
Volkswagen’s leadership has been surprisingly open about the situation. Instead of pretending everything is under control, executives admit they’re stuck choosing between losing money on EVs or paying fines. Either way, the bill is piling up.
Why VW Is Facing Huge Fines
The problem comes down to strict European Union emissions regulations. Automakers must meet fleet-wide CO₂ targets, meaning every gas-powered car sold has to be offset by lower-emission models like EVs or hybrids. If they miss those targets, financial penalties kick in.
For Volkswagen Group, that could mean fines totaling around €1.5 billion (roughly $1.7 billion) between 2025 and 2027. That’s not a one-time hit either, as it’s spread across multiple years, with hundreds of millions potentially lost annually. Even for a company of VW’s size, that’s a serious dent in profitability.
The EV Profitability Problem
On paper, the solution seems simple enough: just sell more electric cars. In reality, it’s far more complicated, as EVs are still less profitable than traditional combustion-engine vehicles, largely due to battery costs and development expenses.
VW Group CFO Arno Antlitz summed it up by saying the company is essentially choosing between two losses: reduced margins from EV sales or penalties for exceeding emissions limits. Until EVs reach cost parity with ICE cars, this balancing act isn’t going away.
Demand Isn’t Keeping Up With Regulations
Another issue is that consumer demand doesn’t always align with regulatory goals. While EV adoption is growing, it’s not happening fast enough to naturally meet emissions targets. That forces automakers to push electric models harder than the market might otherwise support.
In Europe, electric vehicles made up about 20% of new car sales in early 2026. That’s significant, but still not enough for companies like VW to comfortably hit their targets. As a result, they’re effectively selling more EVs than the market organically demands.
VW’s EV Push Is Still Gaining Ground
To be fair, Volkswagen isn’t standing still. The company has seen EV sales grow by over 11% compared to the previous year, with more than 176,000 electric vehicles delivered in the first quarter alone. That’s a solid increase, especially in a challenging market.
In Western Europe, roughly one in five VW vehicles sold is now fully electric. That’s a clear sign of progress, but it still doesn’t fully offset emissions from the rest of the lineup, so the math simply isn’t working in VW’s favor yet.
https://www.aol.com/lifestyle/vw-group-faces-1-7-220059132.html
EV sales in the EU are lagging UK sales – last year making up 17.4% of total sales.
The UK is heading for shortages on Electricity partly because Data Centres being given discounted rates and supply guarantees but mostly from the rush to Nut Zero. Why would you buy an EV or Heat pump when prices for electricity are high and going higher and in Winter will be rationed just when the heating gets turned up and EV range drops.
I thought the shortages and excessive costs were caused by Britain shutting down its reliable coal fired facilities while building solar and wind replacements, but not other facilities of equivalent scale, such as gas or nuclear. Was I wrong?
Isn’t Britain also the place that has forced the shutting in of North Sea oil/gas, as well as making fracking on land illegal, while at the same time trying to rely on wind and solar power, which can be peaky at best, as well as not always available around the clock, and can’t be stored without a bank busting storage system?
Nut Zero is shorter and snappier. Or just say Ed Millivolt is in charge of Energy Security and doing the opposite.
There can never be Net Zero in the UK because there will always long cold rainy and snowy winters. The citizens of the UK exhale about 70 million kg of CO2 every day. What is his Net Zero plan for the people and all the domestic animals ranging from cattle to canaries?
What is this guy thinking?
Oh he’s gonna get around to banning methane from dairy farms and cattle ranches.
At the MLO in Hawaii, the concentration of CH4 in dry air is 1.9 ppmv. One cubic meter of this air has a mass of 1,290 g and contains mere 0.0014 g of CO2 at STP. This trace amount of CH4 can have no effect on air temperature, weather and climate.
The reason there is such a low concentration of CH4 in the air is that discharges of lightning initiates its combustion. There are ca. 8 million discharges of lightning everyday. Lightning discharges generate ozone which would readily oxidize CH4.
Jet planes with their large engines are flying incinerators for CH4. All processes of combustion burn up the CH4 in the air.
CH4 is slightly soluble in cold water. One liter of ice cold water can hold up to 33 ml of CH4. CH4 that dissolves in cold polar waters diffuses to the ocean floor where under high pressure it forms a solid clathrate known methane ice.
We really do have to worry about the CH4 emissions. Mother Nature has developed a capture and storage system for CH4.
Typo in last paragraph:
“We really do NOT have to worry about the CH4 emissions. Mother Nature…”
Mad Ed does’nt do reality. He’s on a mission and thinks he is saving the world.
Aha! I see the error of your ways.
You assume Miliband thinks
Yes. Because punishing auto makers will make people like EVs more.
The goal is to make cars that work, so expensive that hoi polloi will be forced to use trains, buses and bicycles.
Or to create 30-year car mortgages?
It’s the same strategy as with green energy.
You have shit that does not work and no one wants because It’s shit.
You have only a limited influence with indoctrination and fear via MSM, Big Tech etc during the transitional generation(too many alive who haven’t been brainwashed since birth in a green education + entertainment system),
therefore you must sabotage and kill the competition(Competition is a Sin – JD Rockefeller)
so the shit can be established and win as there are no alternatives left.
It’s not about liking – It’s about “no choice” .
Or as the Soviet used to say:: ” In Russia you don’t chose your shoes.The shoes chose you ”
The green revolution just like most other revolutions have no grassroots but are by design,
since at least the European springs of 1848.
And in case you don’t like EV’s .
EV’s are by no means the endgoal.They’ll also disappear as Mark said
Just transitional solutions to keep the plebs calm that will be eventually phased out like ICE cars.
Too big, too heavy, too many ressources needed – E -scooters&biciyles that can fit in your container sized Megacity appartment will only remain,
while rural areas will be completely phased out to reduce street and other maintenance cost by 95% – as HIVE ‘s are war more efficient and easier to control.
Or like Hitler germany where the State was in absolute control of the economy. That’s the great lie calling Hitler a right wing man. Nazi germany was left wing in its core.
Robertvd:
Fascism, socialism & communism are “three peas in the same pod.”
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
Just what they did after Brexit. Because the People made the ‘wrong’ choice they had to be punished. So the Tories, Labour and the EU made relations more and more complicated to ‘improve morale’.
Car manufacturers will just pass on the cost to buyers
ho will buy a Toyota instead?
So…if you limit the sale of ICE vehicles by high taxes and production limits, people might buy EVs (at least those with money, limited long distance use and a place to charge the thing might), but then the Chinese come in and grab many of the sales, so that further reduces your sales of EVs and increases the fines you pay…what a winning formula.
Certainly NOT a “Free Market”. A market controlled by Fiat…Government Fiat!
Like left wing Nazi Germany.
https://www.britannica.com/story/were-the-nazis-socialists
Despite the Democratic Party’s insistence on whining about any attempt to enforce any kind of law as evidence of “Nazi”, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party espoused politics far closer to what we see from the Democrats these days than the Republicans.
Want proof? The Democrats now insist on a platform requiring the elimination of Israel for major candidates. Their candidate for the Senate in Maine actually has a tattoo used by Nazi guards on his chest. What happens when things go wrong for a country that advocates socialism? They blame the Jews. Same playbook. Fails every time.
Democrats are as antisemitic as the Nazis were.
Very similar in many other ways too.
The KKK were democrats.
It talks like a socialist, walks like a socialist, acts like a socialist.
But it’s not a socialist because Nazi’s were bad people and as all good socialists know, socialists are all good people. Regardless of how many people they jail, enslave and kill.
What the Nazis did was to eliminate the left wing competition as we see in all Left wing power structures. The same thing Stalin did. But maybe Stalin and Mao were not real communist.
What a progressive hates/fears most is an other progressive because you are never progressive enough.
I reckon Adolf definitely leaned gay.
The “dress-up” uniforms, the gestures, the ‘different’ hairdo & mustache, the parties, those limp-wristed salutes, the walk, the frequent hissy fits – he didn’t come across as “one of the boys”.
(Nothing wrong with that, each to their own.)
And then there was his 2nd in charge Goering with his ‘signature’ pastel-blue outfits. What was HE trying to convey?
General Rommel it seems was more comfortable hanging out in North Africa for as long as he could.
…… ha ha, the role model for the UK Labour party.
Role model for the european union Big Brother state.
And Adolf was a vegetarian. (not his dog)
Fining companies like this just increases the advantage Chinese EV’s have, over and above the subsidies they get from their government.
And we pay for by buying everything made in china. Without china there would be no Santa Claus. No toys are any longer produced at the North Pole production centre.
One of our U.S. Republican Senators is introducing a bill that would ban the sale of Chinese EV’s in the United States.
He thinks Chinese EV’s make good spying devices.
The distances in the USA make EVs a stupidity…
… or a second car, used as a shopping cart, by wealthy virtue-seekers.
Every new car is a spying device just like your Iphone.
Yes, but not all of them call home to China.
Does it matter who they call. Is a progressive American government any better than china?
“iPhones have been manufactured in China since the product line launched in 2007. Apple established a deep manufacturing partnership with Foxconn in China, which has served as the primary assembly hub for iPhones for nearly two decades.”
Spying on the general population is not required given social media habits.
What do people want?
We’ll tell them what is best for them. And then tell them why they’re wrong. (h/t T. Blair)
Now that the wheels have fallen off of the last 20 years of alarmist reportage via IPCCs almost secretive renunciation of RCP8.5, UK government policies will be increasingly hard to back up without a good scientists say scare.
We can expect no deviation whatsoever while Labour (and mad Ed) are in power – unless a small meteorite surgically hits Islington and Hampstead, that is.
That’s why they have to be in control of the education system. That’s where you transform kids in Green Shirts and Climate Jugend.
I’m asking this for a friend: Do the imported foreign-component of the population (esp. the Mohammedans) living in / within the EU have a preference for ICE or EV type vehicles?
I think my friend realizes that the EU constituency, i.e. population demographics, of the EU (and also the UK, though not presently part of the EU due to Brexit) is changing as a result of immigration, as well as ‘breeding’ within closed enclaves of previously arrived immigrants.
Again, asking for a friend whom I think votes “Restore” (not “Reform” nor Tory nor Labour) party.
To the best of my knowledge new arrivals use taxis…
2025
Migrant given £600 taxpayer-funded taxi to see doctor 250 miles from hotel
Hotel staff booked cars on an automated system if residents could provide proof of an upcoming meeting, such as a GP visit. – Express
One of a great many, and no… you really can’t make it up.
The government is obsessed with dragging the UK back into the EU, single market etc. This is being achieved surreptitiously agreement by agreement behind the back of the people, ignoring the vote we had. But then, they never accepted it. Only now, just talking at the table with the EU is going to cost £1 billion each year. Nothing to show for it, either.
Every year during the summer holidays most of them will visit the motherland . The car is the most used form of transport. You just wonder how much longer the at least 2000 km travel to get there would take?
The EU Overlords need to realize you can’t legislate sales quotas as you can’t legislate what people want to buy…
Or DON’T want to buy!!!
As LooserName would say, this proves that EV is the wave of the future.
Just-stop-oil donny has already proven that. Best ad EVs could get.
Hey bud, have you got $1.7 billion down the back of the sofa or behind the fridge?
Maybe you could start a crowdfund…
A small rise in gasoline prices does not change the economic rules.
EV’s are a problem, not a solution.
Government should stop trying to force EV’s on people. As if they know what’s best.
EVs are like wind/solar
ICE always work and are sometimes expensive
EV always expensive and sometimes work.
And once again, when reality doesn’t support him, LooserName just makes it up.
95.7% of all statistics are made up.
Just like 99.9997% of Climate Data.
JSO hasn’t done anything except throw around orange dust, tomato soup AND act like spoiled children
Oil and Gas production is SURGING ALL AROUND THE WORLD.
This is because DJT has shown other countries that they can use there own resources, if they choose to !
https://www.gep.com/blog/mind/south-americas-offshore-oil-boom
https://energyinafrica.com/insights/oil-and-gas-projects-africa/
https://angolanminingoilandgas.com/africas-energy-sector-surges-in-2025-with-major-oil-and-gas-discoveries/
https://www.moore-global.com/news/africas-41-billion-upstream-oil-and-gas-investment-surge-in-2026/
https://www.el-balad.com/17006073
(Norway’s massive expansion.)
https://energyinafrica.com/insights/nigeria-libya-race-oil-producer/
https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/malaysia-oil-and-gas-market
https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/qld-s-taroom-trough-emerges-as-australia-s-new-oil-frontier-20260210-p5o11p
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Argentinas-Shale-Boom-Is-Rewriting-South-Americas-Energy-Map.html
https://panamericanworld.com/en/magazine/homepage-sections/guyanas-oil-boom-growth-records-and-challenges/
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Brazils-Oil-Production-Keeps-Growing.html
error: Norway link should be
https://www.el-balad.com/17006073
No idea where the stuff at the end came from.
The German ruling class is on a collision course with the IG Metall trade union, the biggest in Europe. Once the unionists get going the German government and therefore the EU can stuff their idiotic policies. Will be interesting to watch.
The people of Europe wanted a free trade zone, the EEC. They rejected the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, in 2005. In 2007 they had the Treaty Of Lisbon imposed on them anyway. So, against the will of the majority, they get to live in an unaccountable and increasingly repressive superstate; which, like the former Soviet Union, has the appearance and trappings of a representative government but is actually anything but.
The trouble started with Maastricht. That’s when it started the journey from the economic bloc to the political union. Lisbon made it far worse.
Some believe that tariffs increase trade and production.
I’m sure they do.
Others take Keynes at face value. But tariffs as you put it are an American idea. It is also hugely illuminating on how the English language has changed in England, not so much in America over the last 250 years.
England is 1100 next year, raise a glass.
England stopped in 1707 when it merged with Scotland to make Great Britain.
Although that could change if Snip, the Greens and Swithering Sweeny get their way.
A new Changan Lumin costs $7,300 in China. As inflation increases, prices of US and EU-made cars will increase, causing sales to decline.
Demand for cheap cars will increase.
Chinese EVs aren’t inexpensive, they’re Cheap (Chintzy)
Thant’s a snark that triggers memories going back to the early 1980’s.
Honda
Toyota
Hyundai
Kia
All ot one time considered cheap, lower quality crap-boxes.
Actual cheap, lower quality crap-boxes:
Geo
Saturn
Tariffs are not the solution. Making better and cheaper is. That’s what the US used to do. And then the Unions and Government destroyed the system making it no longer competitive.
Labor cost
The Dutch population voted NO. The Dutch politicians said it was the wrong answer so they ignored it.
The difference between the EU and the US is that the EU has free trade agreements with over 72 countries outside the EU.
The US has imposed tariffs on all countries that trade with the US.
Free trade + “carbon charges”. Not very free.
I think Trump has made more than 72 recent trade agreements.
How many nations are there? Yeah, that many.
Tariffs were imposed to level the playing field. Then trade agreements were negotiated.
lol….is that why Europe has tariffs?
If you mean that those that bring in stuff from outside the EU don’t have to comply with the same strict rules as for those who produce inside the EU borders you are right.
Even Dutch flowers are now produced in Africa where labour and pesticides rules don’t exist and flown in by plane. Does that sounds Net Zero to you ?
I reckon Alberta is possibly shaping up as Brexit 2.0,
My opinion is based on the fact that all the media and ‘expert’ political commentators are certain that secession from Canada can’t happen.
Just like all the ‘experts’ were certain that the UK couldn’t exit the EU.
Remember too that Canada’s now-prime minister Mark Carney fumbled the call on the likelihood of Brexit when he was Bank of England governor in the lead-up to it.
Like UK prime minister David Cameron at the time, Carney got wrong-footed.
Then his subsequent moves on BoE interest rates left markets in chaos.
If Alberta does leave Canada, then in all likelihood Saskatchewan and possibly Manitoba will also leave. If that happens, Quebec will then probably also pull out. What would happen to British Columbia is anyone’s guess. Alberta would be one of the wealthiest countries in the world without Canada. An impoverished but progressive Ontario and the maritime provinces could be all that would be left of Canada.
I hear Trump is now promoting making Venezuela the 51st U.S. State. 🙂
I can sense the Leftwing heads exploding now!
He winds them up at every opportunity, doesn’t he?
And it works every time!
No wonder he keeps doing it 🙂
He is a master at trolling. The pic of him and Camille’s husband with the title of 2 Kings was Epic.
The speed too. They used to have a day or too to fake some kind of response. Now it’s an hour or two and they can’t keep up.
Are the people of Alberta going to tell Venezuela to get in line? We’re ahead of you. Relax guys, 51st or 52nd, it’s all good and you’re going to have to consider Greenland too. Draw straws.
Trump keeps it interesting. 🙂
I miss the Greenland talk. Must not have been the right price.
VW needs to move car production to low-wage countries outside the EU to remain competitive.
Or VW could move to the U.S. where electricity rates are a lot lower and the government won’t force them to make quotas on automobiles. That would help their profits.
Bingo, we have a winner !!!! I think they might do it, and tax breaks on loans for vehicles made in the States could seal the deal.
Europe can just turn into a sort of Disneyland.
Yes, and if they build new plants in the U.S., they can get big tax breaks.
“Mexico accounted for a record 43.7% of U.S. auto parts imports in 2025, solidifying its position as the top supplier. More than four out of every 10 auto parts imported by the U.S. are manufactured in Mexico, with the industry generating $119 billion in production value in 2025.”
How much CO2 is released in the thermal power plants using fossil fuels generating the electricity for EV’s?
What are the rules for old ICE cars? Do these have to be phased out?
Can VW go to non EU countries and buy up used cars then import them to the EU?
Monday funny.
Ed Miliband’s Net Zero Blitz Fails to Prevent Rise in Emissions
“This led to a 2.8% increase in carbon emissions from power generation in GB compared to 2024.” DS
Switching wind turbines off and firing up gas.
How is this increase occurring on Miliband’s watch?!
All that carbon floating around!
Back to the drawing board!
To stay relevant?!
😄😆😅🤣😂
If by “staying relevant” you mean “marching in goose-step with the EU Eco-Nazis.
The demand is not there. Just because the government is trying to shove EVs down everyone’s throats does not mean people want them.
But go ahead, Europe – destroy what’s left of your industry by forcing it to build what THE GOVERNMENT wants.
Except those who now look into EVs because of high gas prices, thanks to i’m-greta-now trump.
I wonder why there is so much money spend on making EVs look bad if nobody wants them…
Why does the US need high tariffs on them when nobody buys them anyways…
Can you provide some information on this “I wonder why there is so much money spend on making EVs look bad”. And as far as tariffs, there aren’t any on Teslas, Fiskars, etc here in Yankee land.
And once again, when reality fails to support what LooserName wants to believe, he just makes itup.
If EV demand were really anything at all, government sales mandates would be unnecessary
Nobody is “spending money on making EVs look bad.” But lots has been spent trying to make EVs look good, TO NO AVAIL.
Nobody wants to trade their ICE cars that go long distances under any weather conditions and refuel in 5 minutes for an EV that doesn’t go nearly as far and takes 45minutes mminutes to “refuel” and under certain weather conditions may not “refuel” at all.
Not to mention that nasty habit of randomly self-immolating.
Nobody NEEDS to spend money making EVs look bad. EVs accomplish that all by themselves!
Spending half that amount to oppose greens in the next election would be a saving.
Actually, I have a falsifiable hypothesis that supporting a Green Party in the US could be extremely productive for the “”far-right, aka the normal people here. If it could actually happen, I doubt that my hypothesis would be falsified.
Ralph Nader for president?
Chinese automakers are aggressively localizing production in Europe, with key plans to manufacture electric vehicles in Germany and surrounding areas to avoid tariffs and tap into the local market.
Major moves include BYD establishing its first European plant in Hungary and exploring further localization, while Chery is considering using former Volkswagen plants in Germany.
Zeekr targets Germany’s company-car market, where cost ceilings create opening for Chinese EVs
The Chinese intend to drive the European car makers out of business, including taking over the market for high-end luxury cars.
But will their EV-focused strategy work in the face of mounting issues over how much electricity will actually be available in the future to recharge all these Chinese EVs?
What, they are moving production to the EU in order to avoid tariffs.
I thought that only the US uses tariffs, that’s what all the media have been saying.
I thought tariffs always destroyed the economy of countries that use them, that’s what all the media have been saying.
It’s only when the US fights fire with fire that it’s “wrong.”
You know, the same way the corrupting influence of money magical disappears when it comes from government rather than from oil companies.
It’s the “source” that determines the virtue or malevolence. 🙄
I can envisage a future where the EU buys coal and nuclear sourced electricity from China.. to run cheap explosive EVs !! 😉
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No problem was ever solved by giving government more money. It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about international, national, state or local government.
LOTS of problems are CREATED that way, though.