European Commission HQ, Brussels [image credit: Em_Dee @ Wikipedia]
The motor industry gets sandwiched between climate obsession and clean air fanaticism.
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The CEO of Italian truck and bus maker Iveco has condemned as “plain stupid” the Euro 7 standards which tighten vehicle emission limits for pollutants including nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide in the European Union from 2025, reports Euractiv.
Iveco Group’s Gerrit Marx said the regulation as currently drafted by the EU required cuts in emissions of nitrogen oxides and particulates which are “technically unfeasible”.
“The effort to get there is huge. And there is no real payback,” he said.
EU countries and lawmakers are due to negotiate the proposed legislation, which is designed to apply to cars and vans from July 1, 2025 and to buses and trucks two years later, this year.
Separately, the EU Commission has proposed tougher CO2 limits for heavy goods vehicles, requiring new trucks to cut emissions by 90% by 2040 and all new city buses to have zero emissions from 2030.
Marx said if truck and bus makers have to reduce emissions so sharply to meet that legislation, it does not make sense to also have Euro 7 rules imposing tight limits on current engines, requiring sizeable investments, in the short term.
“On our commercial vehicle side, what is not correct is to give us such a tight Euro 7 and at the same time very tight CO2 (regulation),” he said.
Marx, who is German, added the new Euro 7 standards were “complete nonsense”, rooted in the “dysfunctional political system” of the 27-nation bloc in which different commissioners with different political agendas were pushing for laws which often conflict.
He said it had become acceptable in Brussels to bash the automotive industry following the diesel scandal.
Iveco is assessing long-term decarbonisation options, with plain electrification not seen as a suitable technology for businesses including long-haul heavy-duty trucks or buses.
Marx said it was reasonable that in the long term the era of combustion engines would come to an end, “but the way it is now forced on the industry is not correct”.
Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares has also labelled as “useless” the part of the Euro 7 standards tightening combustion engine car emission limits, while European auto lobby group ACEA said they would raise new car prices without bringing the intended environmental benefits.
Full report here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Hmm … a quantam of solace ( how to use that phrase? ) perhaps we ARE beginning to see some Engineers ( leaders) with a good set of Fafnirs or Timkens baulking at the stupidity. Trouble is IF they are the likes of skf’s they’ll just be rolling around muddying the waters https://youtu.be/5hid10EgMXE?t=36 and if they are tapered they’ll be going nowhere like an egg …and the way won’t be clear either ! https://youtu.be/RDw-32vyMwA?t=20 ANd you think that I AM having a bad day!
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
Euro7 looks like an attempt to bulldoze combustion engine production out of the way by insisting on the near impossible. And/or too expensive for mass production.
Does anyone in the unelected EU commission have a degree in engineering, or for that matter any real science discipline? I ask because all their pronouncements have no grounding in the real world. I would go as far as saying the EU commission should be disbanded and forced to pay compensation to the countries they have messed up with all their green stupidity.
EU would save more CO2 emissions by dumping the Strasbourg to Brussels circus sessions.
Not likely to make much difference but anyway…
Classic endless regulation. Let’s say there’s a problem with air pollution – as there probably was in 1970. So the EU (or US EPA) sets up a team of bureaucrats to regulate for better air quality. They set some standards, they are relatively easy to achieve, air quality improves. 50 years later, after many, many iterations, there’s still some air pollution so our brave bureaucrats are still regulating and legislating because that’s their job. For them, no amount is acceptable but they long ago passed the point where the benefits outweighed the costs and indeed where there are any benefits. And even if they have some inkling of this, what can they do? No senior bureaucrat will claim victory and disband them. A
A more simple example. In my London Borough, the rubbish trucks say “we have the cleanest streets ever! Now let’s make them even better.” No! Now we have very clean streets, let’s use our resources on other more pressing problems. But those in the Clean Streets Department can never do that.
“For them, no amount is acceptable but they long ago passed the point where the benefits outweighed the costs and indeed where there are any benefits.”
It’s called the “Linear No-Threshold” theory, greatly beloved of regulators the World over and a brilliant example of statistical sophistry.
The media got there in the end…
Net zero is a Trojan horse for the total destruction of Western society
Prepare for a people’s revolution against policies that will abolish choice and impoverish millions
ALLISTER HEATH
29 March 2023
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/29/net-zero-trojan-horse-total-destruction-western-society/
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