Carmakers Say Crisis Complicates EU CO2 Compliance
Date: 06-Oct-08
Country: FRANCE
Author: Gilles Castonguay
"You can't pile on regulation on an industry during its worst time in the last 10 years," Fiat Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne told reporters while visiting the Paris Auto Show on Friday. "It's nonsense."
The financial crisis is expected to worsen an already bad situation for US and European car makers, which have seen sales plummet in recent months. Drivers are postponing making big purchases because of inflation, high fuel prices, and credit difficulties.
Carmakers, here for the two-yearly autoshow that opens to the public on Saturday, have long been critical of the proposal from the European Commission to cap emissions at 130 grams per kilometre per vehicle by 2012.
They say it would cost them too much money to upgrade the technology under the hood in such a short period of time.
Speaking at the Reuters Auto Summit on the eve of the autoshow, Renault Executive Vice President Patrick Pelata said the additional cost would be enough to turn off buyers.
Thierry Dombreval, chief operating officer at Toyota Motor Europe also said extra costs could further depress sales. Some politicians in Germany, home to big car makers like Mercedes, estimate it could cost billions of euros of export earnings and thousands of jobs.
SAME RIGHTS
Fiat's Marchionne said the commission ought to think about giving the region's car industry 40 billion euros (US$55 billion) in loans to help it develop the greener technology that it expects from them -- just like the US$25 billion in loans the United States has decided to make available to its automakers.
"I want the same rights as everybody else," he said.
There had been a move in the European Parliament to lower fines for non-compliance and stagger the timing of the deadline, but it was rejected by the environment committee.
France, which has the rotating presidency of the European Union, has proposed phasing in the limits up to 2015, with lower fines for car makers that narrowly miss the target.
At an unveiling ceremony at the Opel stand at the autoshow, General Motors President Carl-Peter Forster called for the deadline to be staggered between 2012 to 2015. He also wants tax breaks and other incentives for more fuel-efficient cars.
Most of all, he wanted a decision to be made quickly.
While concerned about the cost implications, Renault's Pelata did not seem as concerned about meeting the compliance deadline.
"We are not worried about 2012 ... we are on track," he said.
Pelata said Renault's fleet was already near the limit. In the first half of the year, it had an average emission of 141 g/km.
In the race to prove its green credentials, Renault was aiming to introduce an electric car with a sales target of up to 40,000 by 2011, he added.
The average CO2 emission from a car in the EU is 158 g/km.
(Additional reporting by Marcel Michelson, Christiaan Hetzner, Helen Massy-Beresford, Matthias Blamont and Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Hans Peters)
