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.
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The Goodwood Festival of Speed happened this weekend, and Ford’s electric SuperTruck managed to beat every other vehicle, gas or electric, to the top of the hill.
The Goodwood Festival of Speed is a yearly event on the grounds of Goodwood House, a historic estate in West Sussex, England. The event started in 1993, and has become one of the largest motorsports festivals in the world.
Many companies attend Goodwood to debut new models, and enthusiasts or race teams will show off rare or customized vehicles or race unique cars.
One of the central features of the event is the Goodwood hillclimb, a short one-way race up a small hill on the property. The track is only 1.17mi/1.89km long, with a 304ft/92.7m uphill climb. It’s not a particularly taxing event – merely a fun way to show off some classic or unique racing vehicles.
As is often the case, companies brought out several interesting EVs to the event, including Honda’s Super EV concept, the recently-unveiled Hyundai Ioniq 6N, and the upcoming Porsche Cayenne EV, still in camouflage after recently setting an SUV record at another UK hillclimb.
Many of these cars came just to show off, to do a demonstration run up the hill and join the company of the world’s most exotic hypercars.
But some cars show up for the glory, and join “the shootout,” the sprint up the hill for the best time.
And Ford didn’t come to show off, it came to win. And in order to win, it brought…. a truck.
Ford’s SuperTruck is a one-off, 1,400+ horsepower prototype electric vehicle, supposedly based on the F-150 Lightning, but in fact bearing almost no similarity or even resemblance.
It’s been festooned with aerodynamic elements all about, lowered, equipped with race tires, and power output has been boosted to the aforementioned 1,400hp. It was driven by Romain Dumas, who Ford have been using since 2022 to drive their electric prototypes.
For the purposes of a hillclimb, perhaps the most important aspect is the Ford’s electric drive. Hillclimbs are a popular form of racing in Britain, and often consist of a short sprint up a small hill, showcasing acceleration and nimbleness more than anything.
Electric cars do well in this sort of racing due to their instant low-end torque, being able to jump off the line faster than the gas competition. They also tend to have plenty of torque, which helps with carrying them up the hills involved.
EVs do well on longer hillclimbs too, because as races reach higher and higher altitudes, gas cars suffer from reduced power due to less oxygen being available for combustion. EVs don’t suffer from this, so they tend to do well at, say, Pike’s Peak hillclimb – which, incidentally, Ford also brought its SuperTruck to, and also beat everybody at.
This year was not the first time Ford has brought a ridiculous electric chonker to Goodwood. Last year, it brought the SuperVan, which has a similar powertrain to the SuperTruck, and also beat everybody.
The SuperVan’s main competition last year was Subaru’s 670hp “Project Midnight” WRX, piloted by Scott Speed, who Dumas handily defeated by over two seconds, 43.98 to 46.07. And this year, the SuperTruck’s main competition was… the same Subaru, piloted by Speed, who Dumas handily defeated by just under two seconds, 43.23 to 45.03.
Ford did not, however, set an all-time record with the SuperTruck, in fact coming in fifth on the list of fastest runs ever. In front of it are two gas cars and two electric – the gas-powered Gould GR51, a tiny open-wheel race car, with a 42.90; an F1 car driven by Nick Heidfeld that set a 41.6 in 1999; the electric VW ID.R, also piloted by Dumas with a 39.90 (which broke Heidfeld’s 20-year record); and the all-time record holder the electric McMurtry Spierling “fan car,” with a mind-blowing 39.08 in 2019.
You’ll notice something similar about all of these – they’re all small racecars that are actually built for speed, whereas the truck is… a big truck. And yet, Ford still managed to beat every single challenger this year, with its big honker of an EV, because EVs are just better.
Watch the run in full below, starting at 9:34. Blink and you’ll miss it.
And now, if Ford continues its pattern, we’re looking forward to seeing the Super Mustang Mach-E at Goodwood next year, which did well this year at a tough Pike’s Peak, getting first in its class and second overall, likely due to inclement conditions that limited running to the lower portion of the course, limiting the EV’s high-altitude advantages.
Given the Super Mustang is a real racecar, and not a chonky truck, it might even give VW’s ID.R time a run for its money (but, frankly, really has no shot at the overall record, because the Spierling’s “fans” give it an absurdly unbeatable amount of downforce).
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Environment
GM gears up to build low-cost LFP EV batteries in Tennessee after announcing new upgrades
GM is preparing to begin converting production lines at its battery plant in Tennessee later this year for low-cost LFP EV batteries. GM’s joint venture, Ultium Cells, announced additional upgrades at the facility on Monday as it prepares for a new era.
GM will build low-cost LFP EV batteries in the US
After beating out Ford and Hyundai last year to become America’s second-best EV seller, GM is widening its lead in 2025.
Ultium Cells, GM’s joint venture with LG Energy Solution, announced plans to upgrade its Tennessee battery plant on Monday as it prepares to introduce lower-cost lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery cells.
The upgrades build on the $2.3 billion investment announced in April 2021 to convert the facility into a key EV and battery hub. The company initially said the Tennessee plant was “at the heart of GM’s EV strategy,” but that was also when GM was still committed to an all-electric future.
GM will begin converting production lines to accommodate the lower-cost LFP batteries at the facility later this year. By late 2027, the company expects to start commercial production.
With LFP batteries, GM said it’s “targeting significant battery pack cost savings compared to today’s high-nickel battery pack while increasing consumer EV choice.”
The Spring Hill, Tennessee, plant currently employs around 1,300 employees. With the ability to produce multiple chemistries, GM said the facility will “guide the next phase of” its battery strategy.
After choosing Spring Hill for its LFP batteries, the next step, according to GM, is finding a home for lithium manganese-rich batteries. GM recently announced plans to become the first company to produce LMR prismatic battery cells at commercial scale.
Meanwhile, GM’s Warren, Ohio, plant will continue producing NCM batteries, which it says have helped it unlock over 300 miles of range.
Electrek’s Take
GM’s electric vehicle sales more than doubled in the second quarter, led by the hot-selling Chevy Equinox EV. The company sold nearly 46,300 EVs in Q2, up 11% from last year.
Chevy is currently the fastest-growing EV brand in the US, while Cadillac claims to have already achieved “EV leader” status in the luxury segment this year. However, that does not include Tesla.
Even GMC is building momentum with the new Sierra EV, seeing strong initial demand, and Hummer EV sales are picking up.
With new, lower-cost batteries on the way, GM aims to continue narrowing the gap with Tesla. GM offers 13 electric vehicles, covering nearly every segment of the market. It already calls the Chevy Equinox EV “America’s most affordable +315 range EV,” but GM has even lower-priced models on the way, including the next-gen Chevy Bolt EV.
Ready to test drive one for yourself? You can use our links below to find Chevy, Cadillac, and GMC EVs in your area.
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Environment
Elon Musk says Tesla is going to have ‘the most epic demo ever’, but we heard that before
Elon Musk is teasing Tesla doing “the most epic demo ever”, but we heard him claim that before and nothing came of it.
On X last night, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that he was shown something at the Tesla Design Studio and that the company will hold the ” most epic demo ever by the end of the year”:
Just left the Tesla Design Studio. Most epic demo ever by the end of the year. Ever.
I used to get excited about Musk making statements like that, but I was burned one too many times.
In 2016, Musk said this:
Our goal is, and I feel pretty good about this goal, that we’ll be able to do a demonstration drive of full autonomy all the way from LA to New York … by the end of next year.
The end of 2017 came and went without this demonstration and now in 2025, Tesla can’t do it either.
However, since Musk referenced being at Tesla’s Design Studio, where it mostly works on car designs and advanced features, people are speculating that it’s something else.
A possibility is the next-gen Tesla Roadster, as Musk has made similar comments about it in the past, but they were again about demonstrations that never happened.
Shortly after the unveiling of the next-gen Roadster in 2017, Musk talked about adding cold air thruster to the supercar to allow it to have unprecedented racing performance and even possibly hover over the ground.
In 2019, Musk told me that Tesla aimed to do a demonstration of that by the end of 2020:
5 years later, it never happened, and the Roadster was initially supposed to come to market in 2020. It has never launched.
In 2024, Musk claimed that Tesla would unveil and demo the new Roadster by the end of the year:
It also didn’t happen, and the CEO instead said that Tesla was “close to finalizing design” at the end of 2025.
Electrek’s Take
The comment about the demo makes me think of the Roadster, but it could be something else. Maybe a bot, but I’m not sure out of the design studio.
Either way, for the reasons listed above, it’s hard to get too excited.
You can’t just believe what Musk says these days. Historically, he has been wrong or lied too often, especially about upcoming demonstrations like this new comment.
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