Automakers are breathing a sigh of relief now that the European Commission is proposing to reverse the 2035 sales ban on new vehicles with combustion engines. However, companies will still have to slash fleet emissions by 90 percent compared to 2021 levels. Even before the middle of the next decade, manufacturers must meet tighter CO2 targets, the latest of which came into effect this year. From 2030 onward, the rules of the game will become even stricter.
With that in mind, Volkswagen is warning that small gas-powered cars have no future in Europe. The CEO of Europe’s best-selling brand told Auto Motor und Sport that models such as the Polo will go purely electric. Thomas Schäfer calls it as he sees it: “The future in this segment is electric.” Developing a new ICE car in the B-segment to comply with emissions regulations would be prohibitively expensive. Those costs would inevitably be passed on to customers, making the car too costly to compete.
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