The European Union is offering Germany an olive branch and will add new language to emissions rules to allow certain new vehicles using e-fuels onto the road after 2035. It remains now to be seen whether or not Germany and other holdouts will accept the concession.
The legislative block was set to sign new rules into law that would mandate that all new vehicles sold after 2035 had zero emissions. An important step towards accomplishing its environmental goals, the regulation would have effectively banned the sale of new internal combustion vehicles.
Germany’s FDP party, though, a pro-business part of the nation’s coalition government, threw a wrench in the EU’s plans this month with a last-minute refusal to rubber-stamp the law unless protections were explicitly made for vehicles running on e-fuels.
Read: Germany’s Push For Synthetic Fuels Protection Delays EU Vote On 2035 ICE Ban
A favored technology by supercar brands, such as Porsche and Ferrari, e-fuels can be burned in internal combustion engines but pollutes less than traditional fossil fuels when manufactured using green electricity. While those automakers see it as a way forward for their historically-significant engines, critics view e-fuels in passenger vehicles, as a waste of resources.
Despite that, unnamed sources told Bloomberg that the EU has offered Germany’s holdouts a new declaration that would alter the rules to allow certain vehicles that burn e-fuels to be sold after 2035. The rules state, though, that automakers would have to find ways to ensure that their new engines cannot burn fossil fuels.
It remains unclear whether this concession will appease Germany’s FDP party and Volker Wissing, a member of the party who acts as the country’s transport minister and was behind the 11th-hour intervention that threatened the EU’s emissions deal.
He is meeting today with transport ministers from other countries that are opposed to the stricter emissions targets, such as Italy and the Czech Republic.
