Italy not on board with French/German CO2 agreement
My, how the tables have turned. First, it was Germany that was in opposition to stringent emissions standards in the European Union which would have regulated the amount of carbon dioxide a vehicle can emit, beginning in 2012. German automakers tend to make large, luxurious vehicles with big, powerful engines. France, though, did not want to see changes made to the regulations, as its automakers already were close to meeting the proposals and thought it would be unfair to make concessions just for German brands. So, the two countries had a little meeting and came to some sort of agreement which would not go into effect until 2015.Now, it's Italy that is in opposition to the French and German deal, as Italian automakers also offer rather efficient vehicles. Italian environment minister Stefania Prestigiacomo calls the new proposal unacceptable and feels that it would put the Italian companies at a disadvantage to its competition. We wonder what the final regulations may look like once every country has had its say in what should be done.
[Source: Automotive News Europe - sub. req'd]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Karl-Uwe Strunzen 1:59PM (6/25/2008)
"German automakers tend to make large... vehicles with big... engines."
Quite true, though there are of course quite a few nuances to this. For example the engines are not necessarily very powerful when compared to the French or Italian equivalents, particularly with diesels where the Germans have a 7-8 year technological lag in the area of common-rail engines. A German diesel tends to lag a multijet, a dCi or HDi in consumption, emissions, AS WELL AS (yikes!) power....
In any case though the "big car"statement is true by and by, as our grandmothers used to tell as when we were but little ones, "telling only a part of the truth is like fibbing big time"....
The "big car" is but one part of the story.
The other part of the story is that in Europe most cars on the streets are by far small or compact cars (known as the A and B segments) and even here German cars have very poor CO2 emissions:
http://www.vcacarfueldata.org.uk/information/how-to-use-the-data-tables.asp#petrol
There are plenty of small German car models out there, and none too cheap, so they should indeed be taking all the top positions in the above petrol and diesel top car charts, but in fact are nowhere to be seen....
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