The EU Commission has rejected industry criticism of the future Euro 7 emissions standard. Contrary to what the car manufacturers claim, the proposal will not lead to extreme price increases for new combustion vehicles and no major technical innovations will be necessary.
The Commission writes on its website that “sometimes misleading and alarmist statements” have been made about the regulation. From the point of view of the officials, the reason for this is a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the legal text they have submitted.
In fact, industry lobbyists warned in no uncertain terms last week about the planned tightening of emissions regulations for cars in Europe. The federal government and the prime ministers of the auto states of Lower Saxony, Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria also partially supported the demands of the car manufacturers.
Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) spoke of possible job losses and the concern that mobility would become a luxury good “when vehicles become more and more expensive without more environmental protection being associated with them”. His cabinet colleague, Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens), demanded that the introduction of Euro 7 “must also be feasible for industry”.
“We are particularly critical of the extremely short introduction periods planned by the EU Commission,” she told the “Stuttgarter Nachrichten” and the “Stuttgarter Zeitung”. At the same time, from her point of view, it is “absolutely necessary for the protection of health” to further improve the air quality in the cities.
The EU Commission sees it that way too. “Our goal is to improve air quality as quickly as possible by using cars that are as pollution-free as possible,” says an official at the Brussels authority. The Commission argues that air pollution is an estimated 300,000 premature deaths a year across Europe.
That cannot be accepted, said Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager when presenting the proposal last year. Although the limit values for nitrogen oxide and particulate matter emissions are only slightly tightened compared to the valid Euro 6 standard, Euro 7 should bring significant improvements – because the test conditions are changed.
Unlike in the past, cars have to comply with the limit values in regular driving on the road under many different conditions and not under previously defined laboratory conditions. This innovation is causing great concern for manufacturers.
The draft provides that the new standard should take effect as early as July 2025. From the perspective of the automotive industry, this deadline is not affordable. And not only because of the technical changes to many combustion models, but above all because of the necessary approvals from the authorities.
According to the industry, each individual model needs a new type approval, or at least an extension of the approval by the Federal Motor Transport Authority. This process alone takes months to years. In the worst case, some models could then temporarily not be sold until the new approval is available.
Since the technical details of the new rules, which are set out in additional documents, are only now being discussed, it is not yet possible to start converting the cars.
In any case, the emissions standard is still at the beginning of the EU legislative process. The Commission has just completed the public hearings on this, and its draft is now going to Parliament and the Council of Member States. There will definitely be changes there.
“In our view, the implementation proposed in our proposal was feasible by July 2025. It is now up to both legislators, the European Parliament and the member states in the Council, how quickly the new Euro 7 standards can be decided and then implemented,” says the Commission official.
The test rules are particularly problematic for the automotive industry. After the first draft of the new standard, heads of European car companies expressed the fear that combustion vehicles could no longer be built on this basis.
You spoke of cost increases of several thousand euros per vehicle if the cars had to comply with the emission limit values in every conceivable driving situation, for example with a trailer on a hill, in extremely low temperatures or at full throttle in first gear.
In the current status of the proposal, however, this is no longer the case. The draft now “explicitly permits less stringent limit values under extended driving conditions, for example at higher altitudes, in hot temperatures or when towing, and excludes a combination of such driving conditions in emission tests,” says the commission.
“There is a lot of misinformation circulating about the cost of Euro 7, based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the test conditions,” says the Brussels official. “The values should only be observed when the vehicle is used normally.”
The Commission is in close contact with Member States and the automotive industry to finalize the definition of normal driving conditions in time for the new regulation to come into force. This will “create legal certainty for manufacturers and consumers”.
From the point of view of the industry, this is urgently needed, because up to now the exclusion of extreme conditions in the draft has been worded rather vaguely. Many a manager is likely to be afraid of test drives by groups such as the German Environmental Aid and the subsequent lawsuits because of exceeded limit values.
For this reason, the industry also assumed that the engines and exhaust systems would have to be further developed at great expense – in the case of the combustion engine, of all things, in which no group would want to invest a lot of money anymore. The EU Commission does not share these fears and expects that some Euro 6 vehicles will already be able to comply with the new limit values. The additional costs per car would be estimated at 90 to 150 euros, writes the Commission.
Buses and trucks, on the other hand, would each increase in price by 2,600 euros, according to EU estimates. In the commercial vehicle sector, the regulation represents a significantly larger step than in the case of passenger cars. Here, nitrogen oxide emissions are to fall by 56 percent by 2035 compared to Euro 6, for passenger cars only by 35 percent.
The EU wants to reduce particulate matter emissions from trucks and buses by 39 percent and by 13 percent from cars. So far, the emission regulations for commercial vehicles have been less strict than for passenger cars. They will also apply longer to heavy vehicles.
The main part of the regulation relates to exhaust gases from the tailpipe – these will no longer exist in new vehicles with the ban on combustion engines from 2035 onwards. According to a new EU proposal, diesel engines should be allowed in trucks until 2040, and in some cases even beyond that.
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