Claims from the car industry that higher legally binding fuel efficiency targets would make cars more expensive, have been undermined today, by a new report from Transport & Environment (T&E).
Research by the environmental pressure group shows that the average new car sold in Europe last year was 4 per cent more fuel efficient, emitted 4 per cent less CO2 and was 2.5 per cent cheaper in real terms than a year earlier. The charity claims that this finding contradicts estimates of the cost of cutting CO2 based on car industry-supplied data.
The T&E report examined two cost estimates carried out for the European Commission in 2001 and 2006 that were based on data supplied by car makers. The earlier report predicted that reaching 140g/km would cause the retail price of the average new car to increase by €2400, the later study said €1200, both suggested a cost of around €100 per percentage decrease in CO2, equivalent to around 0.5 per cent of a car’s value for each percentage CO2 lost.
Jos Dings, director of Transport & Environment said: “The car industry has consistently resisted fuel efficiency regulations by complaining that cars would become ‘unaffordable’. But car emissions have now dropped to 140g CO2/km and that simply hasn’t happened; prices have actually fallen in real terms.”
“Clearly the EU needs to learn lessons from this. When it comes to future targets to improve fuel efficiency, industry cost estimates should be taken with an SUV-sized pinch of salt.”
The not-for-profit organisation’s study concludes that car makers in Europe are now heading for very significant ‘over-compliance’ with the current CO2 regulation and are hence likely to hit the 130 g/km CO2 target for 2015 several years in advance. According to the findings, the industry as a whole is only 7 per cent away from hitting its 130 g/km target for 2015, last year it still had a 11 per cent gap to close, showing a significant leap forward.
However it is Swedish car maker Volvo which should be congratulated for making the biggest leap forward in average CO2 emissions among its European rivals, cutting an industry-leading 9 per cent from the cars it sold in 2010 compared to the previous year. In contrast, average emissions of new Honda and Mazda cars actually increased (0.6%, and 0.3% respectively) last year.
The top four in terms of fleet-average CO2 emissions remains unchanged on the previous year’s study with Fiat leading with 126 g/km CO2, followed by Toyota, PSA Peugeot Citroen and Renault. Daimler remains last on the list, having reduced CO2 in 2010 by a below-average 3 per cent.
Europe’s largest car market, Germany, made the second-worst progress in cutting CO2 emissions from new cars last year, with a cut of just 1.8 per cent averaged across sales of 2.8 million vehicles. Slovakia was the EU country showing the least progress with the average new car sold emitting 1.3 per cent higher CO2 emissions than in 2009. On the contrary, Denmark made an impressive 8.9 per cent year-on-year reduction.
