Stuttgart - Luxury automakers cannot afford to use
emissions-cutting technology because their powerful cars would become
impossibly expensive, an industry expert warned Wednesday.
The European Union's executive arm, the Commission, put itself on
a collision course with the German automobile industry on Wednesday
by approving strict limits on average carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions
of cars.
Willi Diez, head of the Automobile Industry Institute in
Geislingen, near Stuttgart, Germany, said the EU plans for penalties
for excessive emissions were a 'serious defeat for the German makers
of premium cars.'
In an interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, he forecast that
the makers of high-end cars would try to finance the new regime by
upping the prices of their cars.
'Given the tough competition, I'd be doubtful if that will
succeed,' he said.
The big-name German companies would also attempt to cut production
costs to compensate, which would mean a loss of jobs in Germany.
Daimler and BMW would partly relocate to key export markets in Asia
and the United States.
'Those markets are going to become even more important to them,'
he said, forecasting an expansion at US plants or even completely new
factory sites there.
Diez conceded it was technically possible to so refine the
powerful cars that they fulfilled the EU standards. But the
components required for this would be so expensive that end users
could not afford them, he said.
He said it made no sense to him that alternative proposals by
German manufacturers had not been accepted in Brussels.
The European manufacturers had not been in agreement among
themselves. French and Italian makers would 'definitely' have far
fewer problems meeting the requirements, he said.
Germany had earlier voiced dismay at the way the EU Commission
plans to enforce new CO2 emissions limits, charging that the
penalties are biased against its makers of big cars.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said she approved the EU ceiling of 120
grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre for the European vehicle fleet,
but the EU rules would discriminate against Germany and its car
industry.
'We believe that the road suggested is not favourable in economic
terms ... We think it's going to be at the expense of German car
producers and thus we are not happy with the result,' she said in
Berlin.
Earlier the Commission said it was determined to reduce the
average amount of carbon dioxide emitted by all new passenger cars to
120 grams per kilometre by 2012.
A cut to the 130-gram level would be achieved with engine
improvement and the other 10 grams would be saved by altering other
components. The current average is about 160 grams of carbon dioxide
per kilometre for a new car. CO2 is blamed for climate change.
Germany charges that the EU is letting off other nations' makers,
while unfairly fining German makers of bigger, more powerful cars,
which necessarily use more fuel and have more emissions.
But a German environmentalist motoring club, Verkehrsclub
Deutschland (VCD), attacked the EU plans as insufficient to reduce
emissions.
Disagreeing with the manufacturers, it charged that the EU had
weakened the cuts and allowed itself to be manipulated by the car
industry.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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