I don’t expect the EU to ease the 2025 emission target or waive the penalty associated with it since a number of car makers are close to achieving the target. Also, through pooling, automakers can meet their targets. Additionally, ACEA is not against the targets.
According to my projections Volkswagen could meet its passenger cars statutory target of 96 g CO2/km in 2025 by doing the following;
- Increasing Europe deliveries of passenger cars by 2% to 3,341,771 units between 2023 and 2025.
- Increasing its BEV share in Europe to 16.7% in 2025 from 12% in 2023.
- Pooling with another BEV manufacturer, a scenario that will bring in 403,181 BEVs from another manufacturer.
The above scenario is possible (75% confidence level). However, Volkswagen will have to meet the cost of pooling. The cost of past Volkswagen pooling contracts were not disclosed but Tesla-Fiat contract enabled Fiat to reduce its fines by around 80%. Going by the same cost estimates, Volkswagen will only pay around 1.1 billion euros to a pooling partner instead of 5.3 billion euros emission fine.
The above projections are only for the passenger cars. I estimate that Volkswagen Vans could miss the emission statutory target by 4 g CO2/km in 2025. This will attract a penalty of around 191 million euros. Through pooling, this penalty will be very negligible.