The automotive industry faces a number of major challenges this year. In addition to the European car market recording timid growth in 2019, CO2 emissions have continued to increase. This despite new regulation designed to curtail this.
Last year, the volume weighted average CO2 emissions for European markets, were at their recorded levels since 2014. According to data from JATO Dynamics, the average for the 23 European markets totalled 121.8 g/km under the NEDC regime – the third such annual increase in a row. Felipe Munoz, global analyst at JATO Dynamics explained: “As expected, the combination of fewer diesel registrations and more SUVs continued to have an impact on emissions. We don’t anticipate any change to this trend in the mid-term, indeed these results further highlight the industry’s need to adopt EVs at a rapid pace to reach emmissions targets.”
Although last year’s average was 1.3 g/km higher than in 2018, the increase was in fact lower than the difference between the 2017 and 2018 results – where the growth was 2.4 g/km. Despite an increase of EV models contributing positively to emission levels, the move away from diesel had a negative impact, one that the market could not offset. Munoz continued: “The average emissions of electrified vehicles, was 63.2 g/km, almost half that produced by diesel and petrol vehicles. The problem arose because EVs only accounted for 6% of total registrations, which is not yet a high enough figure to create a positive change.”
Furthermore, four of the five major markets in Europe posted higher averages in 2019 than in 2018. Average emissions for Germany, Britain, Italy, and Spain increased, ranging from a rise of 0.8 g/km for Germany to an increase of 3.0 g/km for Italy. This was in part caused by marked changes in attitude and regulations around the use of diesel fuels which has had the unintended consequence of pushing people to drive higher CO2 emmitting petrol vehichles. France was the only market to see better results, as its average fell from 112.0 g/km in 2018, to 111.1 g/km last year. Despite this positive change, their emission levels were still higher than the averages they recorded in 2016 and 2017.
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SOURCE: JATO
