Luca de Meo wants to tone things down. The European objective of completely banning the sale of new internal combustion cars by 2035 will be “complicated” to meet, said the Renault boss, who is also the president of the European manufacturers’ lobby (ACEA), in an interview with Les Echos, calling for “flexibility in the timetable”.
On Thursday, the re-elected President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, reaffirmed that she wanted to achieve this objective. “Going from a 10% market share for EVs (electric vehicles, editor’s note) to 100% in twelve years is really very complicated,” the executive told Les Echos and three European newspapers.
“Strategic error”
“We need a little more flexibility in the calendar,” he added, recalling that when the decision was taken to ban the sale of combustion engines until 2035, “the position of France and the Renault Group was rather to say that 2035 was too early” and that we should instead aim for 2040.
“We are not yet on the right path to achieve 100% electric cars by 2035. (…) However, we must not take advantage of the current market slowdown to completely abandon the objective. It would be a serious strategic error,” the Renault boss also stressed.
Luca de Meo points out that the automotive industry has “invested tens of billions of euros in the transition” to electric vehicles and that they should not “throw them out the window”.
Furthermore, “we must not reject progress” and “the electrification of cars is part of progress,” he insisted.
Risk of damaging the industry
“The question is one of pace,” explains Luca de Meo, highlighting that “most countries have not yet surpassed 7% of market share in electricity to date.”
“The ecosystem must move forward together, all together. That is what I mean when I ask for flexibility and agility,” he explains. In February, Luca de Meo had already considered that a reversal of the ban on petrol and diesel cars in 2035 would be welcome but complicated. “I hope that the ban will be applied a little later, because I think that we will not be able to do it without damaging the entire industry and the entire European automotive value chain,” he said at the Geneva Motor Show.
Finally, for the Renault boss, “the electric car is only one of the solutions” to decarbonise the automotive sector. For him, it would be “more sensible to simultaneously accelerate the renewal of the fleet” and “look at what we can do in terms of types of fuel”.
“In the next ten years, there will not be enough electric cars to really impact decarbonisation (…) In roulette you cannot bet everything on a single colour,” he concludes.
“Need for visibility”
The Renault boss also noted that political instability in France represents an additional difficulty for his company to achieve this goal.
“Politicians must understand that industrial strategy issues go beyond the cycle of a government or an election, and involve the country for ten to fifteen years,” he said.
He added: “This stability is essential, as is the stability of the purchase of aid, which cannot vary from one year to the next based on budgets. In order to make decisions, we need visibility.”
Source: BFM TV
