Stellantis boss says e-fuel exemption risks wasting vast investment in electric vehicles
MARK TISSHAW
Stellantis boss Carlos Tavares has called on government legislators to stick to a set of stable future regulations for the car industry and not do anything that adds “confusion to chaos”.
Speaking to Autocar on a visit to Vauxhall’s van factory in Luton, Tavares was reacting to the European Union’s new plan to allow ICE cars that use synthetic e-fuels to be exempt from a law that will allow only EVs to be sold new from 2035.
Tavares said he welcomed e-fuels as a way to power the 1.4 billion ICE cars that will remain on the roads even if a full switch is made to electric power for new car sales.
However, he highlighted that the broadening of legislation to exempt e-fuels undermined the regulatory path already set towards EVs at the very time when investments and implementation plans had been set for the next 20 years.
“The first scenario is they don’t break the paradigms,” said Tavares on whether e-fuels can be made truly carbon-neutral and affordable enough to become a viable fuel for the future and an alternative to EVs. “Then we’re safe and we keep on pushing the EVs.
“The second scenario is they break the paradigms. What do we do [then]? Because we still have 12 years [before the zero-emissions requirement], right? What happens if some of those guys come up with a breakthrough and find a way to reduce the manufacturing costs tremendously? This is the big problem of what we’re doing.”
Tavares’s underlying points are that politicians shouldn’t make regulations that aren’t technology-agnostic and that there are alternative ways to reduce emissions.
“There’s no dogma,” he said. “It’s just about the fact that we’ve been working for a century in the fine-tuning of technology and then suddenly the outside world would like us to make the same efficiency with a brand-new technology that has a very limited amount of time to be optimised.
“Politicians are very respectful, [but] I’m not really sure they’re listening.
“On e-fuels, what if there’s a breakthrough? What will we do with the [EV battery] gigafactories? What do we do with all the transformation that we’ve been making as an industry? Who is going to pay for that?”
Tavares said he had no concerns over Stellantis’s ability to survive and thrive. Instead, he’s concerned about the societal disruption caused by flip-flopping legislation and the instability it has caused an industry that employs millions.
“I’m worrie
