Clean car seeks green (wealthy) driver

Rules forcing carmakers to build greener vehicles will be of no use unless measures are taken to convince consumers to buy them, experts have agreed in a debate on the Commission’s vehicle-emissions strategy.

The EU executive’s recent proposal to introduce binding caps on the amount of carbon dioxide that new cars can emit has created uproar within the automotive industry, which fears that strict new standards will put European manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage with foreign competitors and lead to massive job losses and delocalisations towards low-wage countries.
Toyota Europe’s Graham Smith pressed for a harmonised structure of environmental taxation, to give a clear signal to consumers. “Without such incentives, the take-up of environmentally friendly technology will simply not happen, because cost and safety concerns nearly always come first on buyers’ list of priorities,” he said.

He added that there was a real risk that the Commission’s plan would force manufacturers to lose touch with consumers by forcing them to design vehicles that comply with strict environmental standards but fail to meet drivers’ aspirations. “The fastest way for any organisation to go out of business is for it to lose touch with its market,” he warned.

EurActiv