The emission standard of Euro 7 has been proposed in November. The law will become effective from July 2025 to replace the Euro 6 that had been implemented since 2014. In addition to the stricter regulation for ICE cars, Euro 7 also firstly regulates the requirement for the particles produced by the material friction of the braking system and tires during driving; Euro 7 also regulates the reliability of the power batteries of BEVs to reduce the frequency of replacing batteries so that the raw material demand of manufacturing batteries can be decreased. EU added the Euro 7 before the timing of zero carbon emission from 2035 revealed in May this year. Although it’s a little bit unexpected, however, in the situation that the performance of global carbon reduction is significantly lagging behind, it’s understandable why EU added another barrier again for carmakers; However, as the timing of implementation is coming within 3 years, It is undoubtedly regarded as another “bolt from the blue” for traditional carmakers as they are already fully occupied for the development of the electrification of car models at this moment, and they have to disperse the R&D resources to solve the emission issues of ICE cars. It means the performance of the ICE systems, where most of them are not allocated with R&D resources anymore, will be further decreased by fulfilling new regulation standard. At the same time, the gap of competitiveness between ICE cars and BEVs will be enlarged. The global automotive industry raised oppositions in succession after the proposal of Euro 7 …
- Ford assumed that valuable R&D resources shouldn’t be transferred to the old-school (ICE cars) technology at this moment. The original product strategy of Ford is to realize zero carbon emission of all passenger cars by 2030, and all of the other car models by 2035. It seems that it adds insult to injury for their operation.
- Stellantis assumed the Euro 7 will slow down the pace of the automotive industry towards the electrification.
- ACEA ( European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association ) assumed that Euro 7 has limited benefits to the environment protection , and it will increase the cost of cars production, and they also assumed that the timing of implementation is too early that it’s impracticable for the progress of R&D.
- VDA ( German Association of the Automotive Industry ) assumed that the time period for the preparation of R&D and production will be just one year after the regulation is passed, which is totally not feasible.
Certainly, there are some groups in supporting the proposal of Euro 7 in Europe, the biggest supporter of the global zero carbon emission target. However, most of them assumed that it should give carmakers and suppliers at least 24 months for preparation after the regulation is approved to be implemented. And even the European NGO – T&E assumed that the regulation of Euro 7 isn’t strict enough that the EU Parliament should make it stricter or even simply veto over the proposal.
To view from these reactions, the timing of the proposal and the necessity in the progress of zero carbon emission is obviously controversial for Euro 7; However, in the span of 21 years between Euro 6 that became effective since 2014 and the zero-carbon emission in 2035, if there are no further actions to lift up the emission standard, it seems that there’s lack of aggressive measures for the efforts of environmental protection from the automotive industry. However, if we view from the situation that traditional carmakers invest tremendous resources into making BEVs and other transformation of new technologies one by one in recent years, carmakers would have hard time in looking after both sides of the development of BEVs and the improvement of the emission of ICE cars indeed, so that there will be some carmakers with insufficient resources to slow down their pace of electrification. If we want to get a compromised solution, I suggested that as major carmakers scheduled to introduce newly-developed BEV platforms in 2025 or 2026, the Euro 7 should be postponed the beginning date of the implementation from 2025 to 2028, to give carmakers a breathing space; Therefore the implementation period of Euro 7 will also be 7 years, and it could also force most carmakers to focus on the acceleration of electrification before 2026, then to cope with Euro 7 requirements in the next 2 years; On the other hand, there might be some positive carmakers to become fully electrified in advance in 2028. After all, the ultimate goal is zero emission, so we shouldn’t affect the progress of electrification by the urge of promoting Euro 7.