Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
EU Transportation

EU Urged to Soften 2035 Ban on Internal Combustion Engine Cars (reuters.com) 109

Posted by EditorDavid from the it's-a-gas-gas-gas dept.
Friday six European Union countries "asked the European Commission to water down an effective ban on the sale of internal combustion engine cars slated for 2035," reports Reuters The countries have asked the EU Commission to allow the sale of hybrid cars or vehicles powered by other, existing or future, technologies "that could contribute to the goal of reducing emissions" beyond 2035, a joint letter seen by Reuters showed on Friday. The letter was signed by the prime ministers of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Slovakia. They also asked for low-carbon and renewable fuels to be included in the plan to reduce the carbon emissions from transportation...

Since they adopted a regulation that all new vehicles from 2035 should have zero emissions in March 2023, EU countries are now having second thoughts. Back then, the outlook for battery electric vehicles was positive, but carmakers' efforts have later collided with the reality of lower-than-expected demand and fierce competition from China.
Car and Drive reports that Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany also "wants to allow exceptions for plug-in hybrids, extended-range EVs, and 'highly efficient' combustion vehicles beyond the current 2035 deadline." They cite a report in Automotive News. The European Commission hasn't made any official changes yet, but mounting pressure suggests that a revised plan could be coming soon.... Apostolos Tzitzikostas, the European Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism, was cited by the German paper Handelsblatt as saying that the EU "will take all technological advances into account when reassessing fleet emission limits, including combustion engines running on e-fuels and biofuels." And these renewable products will apparently be key pieces of the puzzle. BMW uses a vegetable-oil-derived fuel called HVO 100 in its diesel products throughout Europe. The plant-oil-based fuel reportedly reduces tailpipe emissions by 90 percent compared with traditional diesel. For its part, Porsche has been working on producing synthetic fuel at a plant in Chile since 2022.

The European Commission is set to meet on December 10. At that time, the body is expected to assemble a package of proposals to help out the struggling European automotive industry, though the actual announcement may be pushed to a later date.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the article.

EU Urged to Soften 2035 Ban on Internal Combustion Engine Cars More | Reply

EU Urged to Soften 2035 Ban on Internal Combustion Engine Cars

Comments Filter:

  • Renewable fuels? (Score:3)

    by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Sunday December 07, 2025 @07:46PM (#65842267)

    A few factories to transform used cooking oil and gassify waste are just fucking around in the margins. To go beyond that you are going to be slashing the few remaining forests and even then it won't scale to net zero, not enough planet for it.

    Anything is better than biofuel, including fossil fuel.

    Also China isn't going to slow down with EV and hydrogen ... if the EU tries to save aging VW investments, they are not only going to fail, they are going to fail harder. Or is the EU going to go full protectionist AND stick to ICEs at the same time?

    • Re:Renewable fuels? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (hmryobemag)> on Sunday December 07, 2025 @08:25PM (#65842329) Journal

      Biofuels aren't worse than fossil fuels but they surprisingly aren't much better. You can make renewable e-fuels with just renewable power and recaptured CO2, but they take an obscene amount of energy and then the ICE turns most of what all that energy produced into waste heat.

      Hydrogen is a fossil fuel industry distraction, it offers the best selection of the worst downsides: An expensive and currently mostly fossil-sourced fuel you need to get at a station like gas/diesel, relatively long refuel times and short range in a vehicle with a higher up-front cost and weight like an EV, and a fuel that is only available at a small handful of stations, needs to be stored at immense pressures, escapes through solids and embrittles steel on the way out, and burns with an invisible flame like only hydrogen can offer.

      We won't be able to get rid of liquid hydrocarbon fuels completely any time soon but we can make their uses a small enough fraction of what they are today that they're no longer a major source of fossil CO2 emissions and these oddball "fucking around in the margins" solutions can fulfill a decent fraction of the demand.

      • Batteries don't work everywhere, biofuel is unsustainable and can't scale, e-fuel is a very inefficient hydrogen storage method, direct air capture and sequestration is expensive, primary metal air batteries and the recycling methods for them are way less developed than hydrogen.

        Where batteries and (fast) charging works, sure use it ... where it doesn't all other net zero options suck as hard or harder than liquid hydrogen.

      • Re:Renewable fuels? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday December 07, 2025 @11:14PM (#65842545) Homepage Journal

        Some car manufacturers want to wring more out of their investments in hybrid drivetrains. They are also hoping to delay long enough to catch up to the Chinese on battery tech.

        Toyota is a great example. Their solid state battery tech is always a few years away from revolutionising the industry. They tried and abandoned hydrogen.

        • Re:Renewable fuels? (Score:4)

          by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (hmryobemag)> on Sunday December 07, 2025 @11:21PM (#65842551) Journal

          Catch up to the Chinese on battery tech? They don't have any special battery tech. There's nothing special about Chinese EVs components, they're basically the same stuff everyone else is making their EVs out of.

          • Correct.

          • The pollution from a gallon of gasoline has been reduced 99% since the 1960s.

            - Wouldn't this put the pollution reduction effort far into the diminishing returns side of the equation?
            - How much more pollution can be removed from a gasoline burning vehicle?
            - Would drastically improving the quality and lifespan of existing vehicles reduce pollution? This is not just making them lighter and measuring pollution for the first few thousand of miles driven, it is for the expected lifespan of the vehicle including

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Their battery tech is a years ahead of everyone else, from the basic chemistry to the manufacturing process.

            • Basic chemistry? Like what? Like this?

              https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/1... [cnbc.com]
              https://evchargingstations.com... [evchargingstations.com]

              And their manufacturing is heavily subsidized by the Chinese government, and not just that, but it's being done in a way that is completely unsustainable. These cars are literally being dumped, not just globally but INSIDE of China:

              https://www.reuters.com/busine... [reuters.com]

              For the life of me, I don't understand why you put so much faith in a country who's own government actually lies TO ITSELF to the point that ev

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by shilly ( 142940 )

                Erm..the first link you provided was about LMR batteries being available in 2028. That's exciting if it happens, but there's many a slip twixt cup and lip.

                It just seems silly to me that people are so keen to deny the obvious: the Chinese successfully commercialised-at-industry-scale several important EV battery developments before anyone else, including LFP, sodium and semi-solid state.

                • Chinese successfully commercialised-at-industry-scale several important EV battery developments before anyone else, including LFP, sodium and semi-solid state.

                  In which specific production cars? And what specific advantages has it already delivered in said production cars?

                  • Er rather, advantages AND disadvantages

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by shilly ( 142940 )

                    I don't really see why you need me to do this, when Google is readily available to you. It would be nice to think that as I'm going to this effort, you're going to concede that it is in fact the case that China has been innovating in basic battery chemistries, but we shall see.

                    Anyway, I am amazed you really need me to spell this out for LFP: it's quite a well-known chemistry, surely you've read about it? You know, cheaper, more durable, many more charge cycles, greater fire resistance, no M or Co thus no ri

                    • Anyway, I am amazed you really need me to spell this out for LFP:

                      I only need you to understand what I'm saying.

                      it's quite a well-known chemistry, surely you've read about it? You know, cheaper, more durable, many more charge cycles, greater fire resistance, no M or Co thus no risk of conflict minerals, lower power density than NMC but not too bad, etc etc. Used in the R1T, the Mach E, the M3 & Y, loads of BYDs, etc

                      By far the biggest complaints levied against EVs come from the low energy density of the batteries (weight, size, distance.) This is going exactly in the opposite direction. It's also not cheap enough to make low end EVs competitive with petroleum cars, even in developing economies. Mach E and Model 3 and Model Y it was only ever sold in the budget, lower range version of each. R1T is a pretty big car, even for a truck. Yet rangewise it's barely competitive with

                    • Oh and, honorable mention:

                      https://media.mbusa.com/releas... [mbusa.com]

                      Solid-state battery developed with Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains (HPP) and cells from U.S.-based solid-state cell manufacturer Factorial Energy

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by shilly ( 142940 )

            You're looking in the wrong place. What the Chinese have that gives them unique advantages is a better battery production system. They have lower costs to scale, innovate new battery designs (eg Blade, LFP) faster, lower costs to operate (short supply chains and local sourcing), etc etc.

          • they're basically the same stuff everyone else is making their EVs out of.

            That's because everyone else is making it from Chinese tech. CATL produce more batteries than the entire rest of the (non-Chinese) industry combined. BYD is about half the size of CATL and still the second largest in the world. Both of them are on the cutting edge of tech to the point where even companies that produce their own battery tech often buy from these majors for certain stuff.

            There's a reason Tesla despite all of its Gigafactories and ties with Panasonic both license a shitton of tech from CATL as

          • Catch up to the Chinese on battery tech? They don't have any special battery tech.

            Every battery company of note has proprietary electrolyte. The differences between one battery chemistry and another can be significant.

            There's nothing special about Chinese EVs components, they're basically the same stuff everyone else is making their EVs out of.

            Most of them are using Chinese batteries.

      • I am just curious about the industry beyond fuel production, which is rarely mentioned when reduction in crude oil extraction is discussed, i.e. all the chemical production of plastics, dyes, etc. - aren't they based on oil?
        "We" might use e.g. cellulose (for some products), but then where to take so much cellulose from?
        Maybe just offsetting our economy with Nuclear Power Plants, EVs and CO2 sequestration would be a solution - not banning ICEs?

      • Hydrogen is a fossil fuel industry distraction, it offers the best selection of the worst downsides: An expensive and currently mostly fossil-sourced fuel

        To be fair the only company pushing Hydrogen mobility was Toyota. Literally the entire fossil fuels industry was only ever pushing it for the one use case that didn't make much sense for batteries: long-haul transport, and while they were pushing that at no point did anyone ever push the idea of sourcing the hydrogen from fossil-fuel, literally no-one was proposing to build an SMR to generate hydrogen for this purpose.

        That said it looks like even that has fallen on the way-side.

        Also a few other technical po

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by chefren ( 17219 )

          Green hydrogen projects are being implemented with the target of replacing natural gas usage in industry, like in steelworks or kilns. The target is to use excess of solar and wind energy (e.g. in the summer) to make hydrogen out of water and then to burn that instead of natural gas.

          • They still are. That doesn't mean the other use cases weren't being pushed as well. You can see that evident in the various H2 filling stations for vehicles around the place. Here's a map: https://h2-map.eu/ [h2-map.eu], here's an explanation: everything 700bar is stupid (passenger vehicles). Everything 350bar made more sense.

        • To be fair the only company pushing Hydrogen mobility was Toyota.

          Also Honda, and GM was also well invested at one point, but they seem to have given up on it.

          • Invested but never pushed. BMW also had a H2 car, but none of these cars were proudly telling investors that this is the future of mobility. That was very much a Toyota thing.

    • Re:Renewable fuels? (Score:5, Informative)

      by test321 ( 8891681 ) on Sunday December 07, 2025 @09:35PM (#65842441)

      if the EU tries to save aging VW investments, they are not only going to fail, they are going to fail harder. Or is the EU going to go full protectionist AND stick to ICEs at the same time?

      Don't worry too much for now, the news isn't about the EU making a decision, it is about a letter sent trying to influence the Commission. The EC will propose no change unless it's clear there is a majority to vote it at a Council meeting. With 6 countries representing 28.8% of the population, the proponents are far from the required majority of 14 votes representing 55% of the people. Obviously they know they are minority in the room and that's the reason why they started a debate this way. The moment is delicate, but they're still far from winning.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shilly ( 142940 )

        6 countries, of which only two have a car manufacturing industry of note... if the six were France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Czechia and some rando other, than that would be a bit different. Obvs Mertz is pushing as well, but differently and less stridently.

    • ....blah blah....EU....blah blah....fail...blah blah.

      Ah. I see what you did there!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      The other problem with biodiesel is there isn't enough of it. The only reason it works right now is few people are converting used oils to biodiesel for their own private purposes. If you're doing it at an industrial level there just isn't enough feed stock available.

      And it doesn't work too well in cold environments - you have to start the engine using regular diesel because biodiesel when cold is basically a cold gloopy fat blob and needs regular diesel to be thinned out.

  • let's see if these same people are consistent and get nasty with Europe (the good guys) about this also.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by lucifuge31337 ( 529072 )
      Little hint for why people get "nasty" about trump: his' motivations are clear (self dealing) and even if what he's purporting to do is something one agrees with in principal he always goes about it in an incorrect and damaging way. How is it that you haven't picked up on this? It's really, really obvious.
  • Why isnâ(TM)t that ish everywhere if itâ(TM)s so good?

    • It's just some smoke and mirrors to stick to the status quo. Just like Sustainable Aviation Fuel and burning forests in old coal power plant.

      Unfortunately to maintain the smoke and mirrors they are destroying the planet multiple times faster than just sticking to fossil fuel. Paris targets are holy, meeting them is far more important than the environment.

  • If you primarily care about zero emissions, buy inexpensive Chinese EVs. Then, in parallel, figure out how to create a competitive domestic offering.
  • 2035 goal was infeasible for a number of reasons, but the key one is lack of key raw minerals. That is, even if consumer preferences and per unit costs were not an issue, you could not make enough batteries using current technology out of currently existing materials. Exponential growth in material availability just did not materialize.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      you could not make enough batteries using current technology out of currently existing materials

      i'll give everyone a second to comprehend what a nonsense statement that is

      also, this is the new "peak oil" it'll always be 5 years away

    • Price for Lithium has been dropping the last few years, manganese stable.

      Buy it and it will come.

      • Teh free market works, but only for oil! It can't possible work for resources affecting things that free market worshippers don't believe in like EVs.

  • Whoever wanted and could afford an EV, already got an EV. The rest of us prefer convenience and not having to worry about charging yet another device, even if at the cost to the environment. Sorry to break it to you, but most of the working class people don't give a sh... about the environment. We just want to reliably and comfortably get from A to B, without having to worry about yet another thing in life. Technology should make life easier, not more convoluted. Most of us are not martyrs willing to sacrif

    • Nah, the deals on used EVs are great right now; I think more people are going to start buying them up. They have low maintenance and running costs, and for around town, they're great.

      There are so many goddamn F-150s on the road belonging to people that never tow a single thing or load the bed up. They're commuter cars for accountants with masculinity issues. Don't tell me that we shouldn't get these dipshits into normal cars or EVs both for the sake of the environment and road safety.

      • It would cost me 48 weeks of gas just for the cable to run to my garage to charge an EV.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shilly ( 142940 )

          Will you show your working? I'd be very curious to see it

          For the record, I bought a longer 10m cable when I got my new car to replace the old 5m cable. It cost me 120 quid back then, but I see they can be picked up for 60 quid now. This is for a 7kW capable cable.

          In the UK today, petrol is about 130p per litre, so 120 quid's worth is 92 litres. A UK spec Mercedes GLA (the equivalent of my car, an EQA) gets about 42mpg. That's 9.2 miles per litre, so enough for 850 miles. The typical UK car is driven 20 mile

          • My house is around 100 eet long and the main circuit box is on the other side from the garage in the basement. Cables cannot be run through the basement ceiling, so they have to run a shielded cable around the outside of the house and into the garage. Apparently a 250 foot shielded copper cable runs around $2000. I fill my tank around once every two weeks at 90 a fill. Comes out to 45 weeks now that I do it again.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by shilly ( 142940 )

              Huh.

              Every house is different, and I don't know anything about electricity beyond the basics, but at least for my house, what the electrician did was to split the supply for the EV off from the main feed with an external isolator switch near the incoming service (a small cable was then taken through the external wall to the consumer unit where the fuses are, required a small hole to be drilled in the outside wall). Probably depends on whether this is allowed, but it worked well for us. I guess another possib

              • ... And electricians are expensive. I'm just saying that there are a lot of extra costs that don't seem to get considered in articles when they analyze how long EVs take to pay off.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by shilly ( 142940 )

                  I don't think anyone's ever tried to hide the fact that putting in a home charger has always had two costs associated with it: the kit and the installation. The all-in costs have always been 500 to 1k in the UK, which is not nothing, but also only a small fraction of the costs of buying a car (unless it's a really, really shit car). What we were discussing was whether your costs in your circs would be the typical 500 to 1k or would be that plus another 2500 for a long shielded cable run, and I think the ans

                  • Ok it's just that it seems EV proponents want them to become mainstream. I just point out the problems that will prevent them from becoming so.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by shilly ( 142940 )

                      But your home's set up isn't mainstream at all: the vast majority of houses that can have home charging do not need to spend more than 1k to get it. They don't have to contend with 250 foot cable runs. Although as I pointed out, in all likelihood, you don't have to contend with that either. Your problem is niche, not mainstream!

                    • Most houses will not have a charger just go in without some form of renovation to the house. You would be pretty lucky to have a breaker panel in your garage with a spare circuit.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by shilly ( 142940 )

                      There's a million homes in the UK alone that demonstrate you're wrong. The vast majority of them didn't need any renovation. I know this, because the average cost of an install in the UK, including supply and labour, is between 500 and 1000 quid, and that wouldn't be enough to pay for renovations. That said, a consumer unit that's full hardly counts as renovations. A bigger one will cost about 100 quid! Not that most people have needed it.

                      I shall be generous-minded about this and put it down to Canadian hom

      • If you're working class, you're likely to require regular long commutes to work, not just around town. You're also very likely to live in a flat or terrace with no access to a charger.

        Distance driving on the weekends matters, too.

        UK is also introducing 3p per mile road tax for electric vehicles now.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shilly ( 142940 )

          Working class people in the UK are not especially likely to require long (distance) commutes to work More than anyone else. Where on earth did you get that idea? They are more likely to have to rely on public transport, however, because lots of people can't afford a car in the first place.

          There is no long UK drive that someone would do of a weekend that's any kind of issue in an EV. No-one is driving from Southend to Aberdeen. They might drive from London to Sheffield or similar, but that's completely fine

          • I hike a lot and regularly drive 250 in a day in summer months. 125 miles out to the start of the hike, and 125 miles back. Remote locations. No chargers nearby. And I don't want to be spending valuable time recharging.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by shilly ( 142940 )

              250 is completely fine in an EV. I drive from London to Durham, which is 260 -- ie longer than your there-and-back journey -- it take five hours if all goes well. The car doesn't need to charge, but I do need a break on a journey of that length. I would not blink about jumping in my car and driving 125 miles, going for a hike, and driving home again, without ever thinking about the need to plug in either en route or at my destination. Just plug in the night before and plug in when I get home. Totally straig

              • 250 is just average. Plus I want to have spare miles in the tank in case I want to take a detour and see something on my way without worrying about mileage at all. It's the last thing I want on my mind when relaxing in the mountains.

                Here's a challenge for you. Find me a Focus-sized car that can do at least 250 miles on a single charge at motorway speeds (all 250 miles at motorway speed), with AC on and 4 adult passengers with 4 backpacks on board, and that doesn't cost a fortune.

                This is my average weekend d

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shilly ( 142940 )

      This is such a silly little story to tell yourself, about demand being saturated, when EVs are taking an increasing market share in European markets (and others, but the story you're commenting on is about Europe). And to claim yourself as working class when you've got a nickname here of dev and you're on Slashdot is just incredibly inauthentic.

    • It's not just charging the EV, it's the app you need to use a charging station, and the odds that it's going to actually work.

  • ...to favor EU energy and reduce the primary energy needs. You know all that 'nationalism'.

    Yes, the post failed to mention that all countries listed have a far right government.

    • The post failed to mention something that isn't true?
      The Czech Republic has a relatively centralist coalition led by the Petr Fiala cabinet - which is just right of centre.
      Poland is led by the Civic Coalition, a solidly centralist party with a coalition of slightly left and slightly right of centre parties with virtually no extreme views in any direction. They are probably the most centralist government in Europe right now.
      Slovakia is run by DSD, a party which split off from the Democratic Left because the

      • Letter signed by Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Slovakia.

        I should have added nuance but:
        - Germany irrelevant, not a signing member
        - Slovakia's Fico is populist, allied to the nationalists and has all the right wing tropes, all the youth in the street, anti EU
        - Czech: Andrej BabiÅ is a little Trump, populist, Russian fan etc...
        - Poland is my exception here but alas it's on a razor thin majority with PiS crimpling Duda's moves.

        I really wish I were wrong.

        • Germany irrelevant, not a signing member

          Clearly you don't understand how the EU works. Germany was a core player in this, and has been for a while. This letter is rather irrelevant, there's been a discussion in the EU about relaxing these rules for well over 6 months now spearheaded by Germany at the behest of their industry. The thing that is irrelevant here is the letter itself.

      • Funny enough Czech's Babis allied with the far right and 'motorists for themselves'.

  • What you choose to highlight matters so much (Score:3)

    by shilly ( 142940 ) on Monday December 08, 2025 @03:00AM (#65842755)

    As always, framing matters hugely. And at the moment, sinij is having a lot of success in framing stories about renewables, EVs, etc as being a challenge.

    You’d never know from these stories that actually, renewables and EVs continue to be booming market sectors that continue to have lots of popular and political backing, including in Europe. For example, EV sales in Europe are substantially up this year compared to last year (1.5m+ sales so far, share of new sales up by at least 3 percentage points); Spain has committed to 95% of domestic production being EVs by 2035; the UK is announcing the clear-down of its connection backlog this week which will substantially accelerate new renewables coming onto the national grid; Pakistan has gone from a standing start to a solar share greater than China’s in four years, leading to solar generation exceeding demand at points in some industrial regions for the first time ever; and on and on.

    So much good stuff is happening out there.

  • You can fade out combustion engine by 2035 without prohibiting its use. this is largely unpopular. You don't have to do it and make it appear as if you take something away from people.

  • A large part of the German population is against watering down the 2035 goal. This is lobbyism from car manufacturers who failed to commit to EV. Merz also appears to try to please right wing climate denier voters.

    It is well known that e-fuels have no future with cars because of the losses during production. They are a fairy tale introduced by a now-irrelevant political party that was part of the former governing coalition. That party had even stronger ties with the car lobby, especially Porsche.

    It is also

    • A large part of the German population is against watering down the 2035 goal. This is lobbyism from car manufacturers who failed to commit to EV. Merz also appears to try to please right wing climate denier voters.

      Apparently the German car lobby is also trying to eviscerate the vehicle safety regulations in the EU so that American self-certified toddler mashers with zero pedestrian safety measures are legal. Why? Well they figure if the EU and US have reciprocal safety legislation then Trump might lift thei

  • One country's corruption is another one's opportunity.

  • EU (Score:2, Insightful)

    by groobly ( 6155920 )

    EU is a suicide cult.

  • If this happens, it will be a gift of the EU to the owners of VW, Mercedes, BMW and the likes.

    You can look those owners up on financial sites or Wikipedia. A large part are family offices representing insanely rich individuals who's only merit is being heirs to founders of above companies. They will be rewarded for lack of innovation, terrible engineering and investing in non-starters like hydrogen. It will also sabotage the clean energy transition and push Europe further back towards the status of shitho

Slashdot Top Deals

Bus error -- driver executed.

Close