Automakers whine about €15B fine they knew they’d risk for pushing gas cars
Renault CEO Luca de Meo said today that automakers collectively may need to pay ~€15B in fines if they miss 2025 emissions targets, as they’ve failed to ramp up efficient vehicle production in line with EU guidance – even as consumer EV demand continues to rise in Europe.
At issue are Europe’s 2025 CO2 targets, and a penalty calculated based on fleet average CO2 emissions per automaker.
By 2025, automakers are supposed sell vehicles with average emissions of 93.6g/km or lower. If an automaker fails to meet this legal target, which was established in 2017, it may have to pay a fine of €95 per gram of CO2 per car.
The potential fines vary by automaker, with some automakers close to meeting the targets and some far away. Multiple automakers have already met the targets, namely Tesla and Volvo, who are well under the requirements. And some are close to meeting them due to high EV or hybrid mix, like Kia, Hyundai and Stellantis. These companies risk a fine of a few hundred euros per car if their fleet emissions remain at 2023 levels.
Worst off are Ford and Volkswagen, which have a longer way to go before meeting 2025 targets. These companies could risk fines of €2,000+ per car, given their current levels of noncompliance.
de Meo tries to avoid blame for fines industry knew were coming
Today, Luca de Meo, who is CEO of Renault and also head of the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA), said to Inter radio in France that fines could total €15 billion if fleet emissions remain at today’s level, or that automakers would need to give up the production of 2.5 million polluting vehicles in order to come into compliance.
de Meo said “the speed of the electric ramp-up is half of what we would need to achieve the objectives that would allow us not to pay fines,” notably using the words “the electric ramp-up” instead of “our electric ramp-up” in order to suggest blame could come from external factors instead of from the industry itself.
de Meo went on to beg for “flexibility,” saying “setting deadlines and fines without being able to make that more flexible is very, very dangerous.”
Notably, these targets were established in 2017, which is more than enough time for automakers to know what they need to do, and were already subject to interim evaluation in 2023.
The average car development cycle is about 7 years long from start to finish, so even if automakers waited until after the 2017 regulation was adopted (which would have been folly, since both climate change and the necessity of the EV transition have been obvious since well before then), they still had plenty of time to bring new models to market that would be ready today.
de Meo isn’t the only automaker head who has repeatedly called for 11th-hour flexibility on targets they knew about 8 years ahead of time. BMW CEO Oliver Zipse has also called for a review of the targets.
But the ACEA, which de Meo is also the head of, says the 2025 targets should remain unchanged, saying “any change to this would not leave enough time to adapt due to vehicle development and production cycles.”
And Transport & Environment, in an April 2024 analysis, showed that these targets are still reachable, just that automakers have put in little effort to reach them yet.
In previous years, automakers made the same complaints that new targets would be hard to reach and that they risked fines, begging for leniency instead of just putting in the work needed to meet them. Then, miraculously, when the time came for regulations to go into place, their fleet emissions dropped precipitously from their previous plateau to meet the new targets. It’s almost like the effort was possible all along. I wonder if the same is true here…
Electrek’s Take
To be clear: I have absolutely zero sympathy for any automaker who was given years of notice that they would be fined for poisoning the world’s climate, and yet continued to do so and are now asking for lenience. You broke the law, the law is a good law (which could be better), you had plenty of time to get ready for it, and you failed to do so.
One attempted argument from the automakers is that “demand has cooled” for EVs and that it’s not the automakers’ fault, but this is incorrect. EV sales continue to go up, not down (+11% year-over-year in Q2 2024), which means demand continues to rise, not shrink, in spite of the many incorrect headlines stating otherwise. Hybrid sales are also up in the EU (+21% in Q2), which also helps increase fleet efficiency, though not as much as EV sales do. Meanwhile, gas car sales actually are slowing (-2% in 2Q).
One reason this rising EV sales tide hasn’t lifted European automakers’ boats as much as it might have is because many of those EV sales are taken up by upstart automakers, whether it be in the form of Tesla which has Europe’s best-selling vehicle, or Chinese brands which are exporting affordable EVs into Europe after that country’s auto industry actually committed to building cleaner, more futuristic vehicles rather than waffling and begging regulators to protect them while they pollute just a little bit more please. Indeed, the two brands that got busy exceeding targets instead of whining are listed in this paragraph – Tesla, and Volvo (owned by Geely, a Chinese firm).
Also, all the above Q2 sales growth numbers could (and should) be higher in magnitude, if it weren’t for automakers’ intransigence. These numbers are your responsibility to move, not anyone else’s.
Customers will buy the products they’re shown – it’s your job to create demand (after all, you’ve spent the last century trying to reorganize all of society around more and more wasteful, oversized vehicles in the first place), it’s your job to build the products, and it’s your job to scale them to affordable prices.
You have known this was your job for many years now, if not decades. And you didn’t do it.
And it’s not an impossible job either. Not only has Tesla already met the targets (despite its CEO losing his way on climate change), but so has Volvo (despite its recent misguided EV backtrack) – showing that both a new(ish) startup and a company with an established, decades-old gas car business can both exceed these targets, and do so by a longshot.
So, everyone else that’s complaining is simply doing a subpar job of it. These automakers have failed to cross a bar that is demonstrably crossable, and will be penalized for it if they don’t clean up their act immediately, just as they should. They continue to build and advertise cars that poison the world, that destroy nature, that threaten and will lead to mass displacement of vast swaths of the human population, and so on, and they absolutely should have to pay for it – and frankly should feel relieved that they’re not being made to pay more.
If they don’t want to pay the price they’ve brought upon themselves, they’re welcome to stop building, advertising, and lobbying in favor of cars that poison the world anytime. Nobody’s making them spend the tens of billions they spend advertising gas cars to Europeans every year.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
TELO Trucks, the maker of a super small electric pickup truck, announced that they raised $20 million, and Tesla co-founder Marc Tarpenning was among the lead investors.
At Electrek, we have been closely covering TELO’s journey over the last few years. Our resident small EV-lover, Jamie, got a close look at the first pre-production prototype earlier this year.
TELO aims to bring to production a small electric truck, the MT1, that is no larger than a Mini, yet still packs a ton of utility, with a base price of $41,000 (before incentives, if any) and a range of 260 miles.
- Seating for 5 adults
- A 5-foot bed that extends to 8 feet with a folding mid-partition
- Once extended, the bed has space to fit plywood flat on the floor (not over wheel wells)
- All-wheel drive
- Up to 350 miles of range
- Exceptional navigability for high-density towns and cities
The company had raised only $8 million to date, which is really nothing in the capital-intensive world of electric vehicles, but the team still managed to produce two working pre-production prototypes.
Now, TELO announced that it raised $20 million in its Series A round of funding.
The round was led by Yves Behar, a renowned industrial designer and co-founder of TELO, and Marc Tarpenning, one of the two original co-founders of Tesla and a Venture Partner at Spero Ventures.
TO VC, E12 Ventures, Neo, Marc Benioff, Uncorrelated Ventures, Nova Threshold, MCJ, and others have also participated in the round.
Behar commented on the news:
“I have great confidence in the TELO team as we build a future-proof vision for mobility. The MT1 proves that innovation can deliver smarter design, greater practicality, and uncompromised capability, shaping how we’ll all move tomorrow.”
Tarpenning added:
“TELO has the vision, product, capital efficiency, and manufacturing strategy to make the next great transportation company.”
Capital efficiency is the name of the game. While $20 million is more than twice the money in the bank than TELO ever had, they plan to reach “production readiness and pass all federal requirements to get the TELO MT1 on the road” with that money, which would be extremely impressive.
TELO now has over 12,000 orders for its small electric pickup truck.
The company is also planning to incorporate Aptera’s solar technology on its vehicles.
Electrek’s Take
Tarpenning, now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. I’m happy to see him still involved in the EV world. He and Eberhard, with their presentations on the founding of Tesla and its aftermath, played a significant role in convincing me that battery-powered electric vehicles are the future of transportation.
I do like the TELO project. This form factor really doesn’t exist in this part of the world, and I really don’t see any reason why.
Now, $30 million raised to reach production in the EV world is ridiculously low, but it’s not impossible.
Joshua Phitoussi, Managing Partner at TO VC, who participated in the round, said it best: “disciplined scale-up is the name of the game in auto manufacturing.” You can make it work if you remain liquid and track your costs like your life depends on it.
You have to design for manufacturability.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Volvo launched the new and improved 2026 Volvo EX90 on Monday. The upgraded EX90 is smarter, delivers faster charging times, and Volvo is rolling out the improvements to current owners, for free.
Meet the upgraded 2026 Volvo EX90
First unveiled in 2022, the EX90 was one of the most highly anticipated electric vehicles. Although it was initially scheduled to launch in early 2024, Volvo delayed it several times, saying that it needed more time to work through software issues.
Volvo finally began production of the EX90 at its Charleston, South Carolina, plant in mid-2024, followed by the first customer deliveries later that year.
After rolling out in the US and Europe, Volvo said the three-row electric SUV would be missing key features at first, including Apple CarPlay. Shortly after, complaints began to appear in online forums regarding glitchy software and other issues.
Despite the issues, the electric family hauler remains a stunning SUV (see our review of it), and Volvo is promising to get it right this time around.
Volvo opened orders for the upgraded 2026 EX90 on Monday, which fixes the biggest issues that haunted the outgoing model.
The 2026 Volvo EX90 is now based on the company’s advanced new 800V platform, up from the 400V system in the 2025 model year. In addition to improvements to its in-house battery management software, Volvo said the upgrades deliver significantly faster charging speeds, with the ability to add up to 250 km (155 miles) of range in just 10 minutes.
Other new features include a host of safety alerts for road conditions, hazards, and more. Volvo also improved the automatic emergency steering function and Park Pilot assist.
Like the new ES90, the 2026 Volvo EX90 now comes with a high-tech electrochromic panoramic roof that allows you to adjust the transparency.
With an upgrade to its core computer, a dual NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Orin-based system, the new 2026 Volvo EX90 now has 500 TOPS (Trillion Operations Per Second) of computing power. To put that into perspective, Apple claims the iPhone 16 is capable of 35 TOPS.
The upgrade is not just for new buyers, either. Volvo is offering owners of the 2025 EX90 a one-time upgrade, free of charge. Current owners can receive the upgrades through a scheduled service visit.
With the 2026 model year coming and the $7,500 federal EV tax credit set to expire on Sept 30, Volvo is currently offering a few deals that might be worth checking out. The 2025 EX90 is listed for lease at $869 per month, while the smaller EX30 is available for just $399 per month. Looking to test one out for yourself? You can use our links below to find Volvo EX90 and EX30 models near you.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
A company that recently installed charging points for every parking spot in a 90-unit condo complex at a cost of just $405/unit is back, with a newly updated charger with more capabilities that should make apartment charging even easier.
You may remember a post we did about how a condo complex installed an EV charger in every parking spot for just $405/unit, after a utility incentive that covered $2k per unit.
The basic idea was, through use of a low-cost (and lower speed) charging outlet, a budget installation could meet the needs of most drivers at a much more affordable rate than putting whiz-bang dedicated fast chargers with dedicated service for every unit at higher cost. And by installing it for every unit, the project would benefit from economies of scale.
The chargers are capable of charging at “level 2” speeds, but will often throttle down to lower speeds based on availability of electrical capacity.
Finally, with available incentives from a local utility, the complex was able to bring the cost down to almost nothing. At $405/unit, that’s less than a single month’s worth of the complex’s HOA fees.
At the time, with 90 units, it might have been the largest apartment EV charging project in the nation with “100% coverage,” that is, where all parking spots in the complex are covered by EV chargers.
But now Pando’s offering is getting an upgrade with a bunch of new features, but also a higher price.
Pando’s new “Gen2 Smart Outlet” starts at $649 per unit, whereas the Gen 1 started at $599 and is currently discounted to $449. But it will be phased out in favor of the new tech.
The new smart outlet has better tap-to-charge integration, allowing easy starting of charging sessions without having to pull out your phone to start the charge from Pando’s app. It also improves connectivity, so there’s less chance the system will lose contact with home base, with a stronger antenna and the ability to use a driver’s phone as a wi-fi bridge. Finally, it has a manual mode that doesn’t require any connection to cloud services in case the charger is in a really difficult spot to reach wirelessly.
In addition, Pando is announcing the Pando+ Modular Charger, which has all the features of the Gen2 but with an included modular cable attached, for sites that would rather include a cable instead of having drivers bring their own. But, in order to solve the reliability problems associated with maintaining a cable attached to a charging station, the cable is easy to swap out and doesn’t require an electrician to do so.
The Pando+ charger also interfaces with a new feature called “Pando Pulse” which can dynamically manage building loads, understanding just how much electricity is available to push to the chargers. It can then set charging speeds based on how much electricity is available, better ensuring that everyone gets the electrons they need when they need them.
Electrek’s Take
These options are more for building managers than renters, but this is just another step towards helping to make charging easier for apartment-dwellers. If you’re looking for more resources for apartment EV charging, either as a owner or a renter, find more on that here.
I’ve long said that the only real problem with EVs is charging for people who don’t have access to their own garage. Whether this be apartment-dwellers, street-parkers or the like, the electric car charging experience is often less-than-ideal outside of single family homes, at least in North America.
There are workarounds available, like charging at work, or using Superchargers in “third places” where you often spend time, but these still aren’t optimal. The best bet is just to charge your car wherever it spends most of its time, which is your home. When you do that, EVs outshine everything in convenience.
So there’s a need for solutions in this space, and Pando’s seemed like a pretty good one when I first heard of it, and seems even better now with these new upgrades. My one misgiving when I first heard about it was the need to use Pando’s app, but it seems like these upgrades will have full tap-to-charge functionality, directly from Apple/Google wallet, without the need to have cell service enter the equation. That’s a huge plus for usability and reliability.
Other companies do have similar solutions, like a 143-unit project that just broke ground yesterday at Bayview Condos in Millibrae, CA. This one will apparently cost nothing out of pocket for the HOA, thanks to the same utility incentive from the same utility, Peninsula Clean Energy. It uses GoPowerEV chargers, a competitor to Pando, and we’re sure we’ll hear more about it as the project proceeds.
Hopefully the more competition we see in this space, and the more big projects like these get off the ground successfully and at low cost, the more we can finally move towards solving the problem of apartment charging once and for all.
And, frankly, we also need legislation/building codes to hop in and require this sort of thing, so it becomes the rule rather than the exception and apartment dwellers can feel secure that they’ll be able to find a place to charge. And the lower install costs get, the more realistic a legislative requirement would be.
The 30% federal solar tax credit is ending this year. If you’ve ever considered going solar, now’s the time to act. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment12 months agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024