Major carmakers refuse to commit to 2040 combustion ban

Thursday, 11 November 2021

Efforts to curb carbon emissions aren’t going as smoothly as some might have hoped, as a COP26 pledge to end fossil-fuel vehicles by 2040 is being met with an uncomfortable silence from Toyota, Volkswagen, and Stellantis, among other makers.

Not having three of the top four carmakers in the world (Stellantis being the merger of PSA and FCA, which includes badges like Peugeot, Citroën, Jeep, Alfa Romeo and Dodge) is a hefty blow to the pledge.

Honda, Hyundai Motor Group, and Nissan (which doesn’t seem to include the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance) also did not sign the pledge.

Toyota, along with Volkswagen and Stellantis, has refrained from committing to a 2040 ban on combustion engines.

Ford, General Motors, Volvo and Daimler have thrown their weight behind it, as have China's BYD, and Jaguar Land Rover.

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Martin Kaiser, Executive Director of Greenpeace Germany, told Reuters the absence of the major economies and producers was 'gravely concerning'.

'To stop new fossil fuels, we need to cut off our dependency,' he said. That means moving on from combustion engines towards electric vehicles and creating clean public transport networks without delay.'

It appears that those who didn’t sign up are wary of committing to targets like the 2040 death date without similar action from their governments, to ensure the required infrastructure for zero-emission vehicles is in place after devoting huge amounts of money to developing the technology.

That doesn’t go entirely with the plan of the Japanese government, which has indicated it wants to phase out combustion engines by 2035. Leading to speculation that the likes of Toyota, Honda and Nissan won’t commit until the government puts that indication into law.

Germany, one of the countries that withheld from the pledge, said that it didn't want to rule out combustion cars running on fuels made from renewable energy, the likes of which Porsche is currently working on.

The US as a whole has also refrained from committing, although states like New York and California are on board. China is another in the ‘no’ camp.

Countries signing up include New Zealand and Poland, joining a number of nations already committed to ensuring all new cars and vans are zero-emission by 2040 or earlier, including Britain, host of the COP26 summit.

Cars, trucks, ships, buses and planes account for around 25 per cent of all global carbon emissions, data from the International Energy Agency showed, with most of that coming from road vehicles.