GERMANY AND SOME OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES ARE NOT HAPPY ABOUT THE DEMISE OF THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE
Dutch Engineer Gijs Schalkx methane motorcycle
As you probably know the EU is bringing in a combustion engine ban from 2035 in an attempt to keep emissions down to meet targets designed to combat global warming. Many countries have already signed up and are committed to the ban including: Denmark, the UK, Sweden, Iceland, Ireland and the Netherlands. But there are some dissenting voices and they’re getting louder, Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary are now allied against the EU’s ban.
The above countries want combustion engine cars to carry on after 2035, even if this is in a carbon neutral way, believing that it’s the emissions which are the problem, not the combustion engine itself. They see the solution as finding an alternative to carbon rather than banning the principle of combustion engines. Toyota is one firm which believes that there are other alternatives to combustion engines and it is not simply electric vehicles alone which offer a solution.
Germany is another country which sees alternatives. When talking about this issue, German transport minister Volker Wissing said:
“A ban on the combustion engine, when it can run in a climate-neutral way, seems a wrong approach for us.” The countries which oppose the ban want an exemption after the cut off date of 2035 for ICE cars which are able to run on carbon-neutral fuels. There are a lot of alternatives to petrol or electric cars in the pipeline, as companies race to get ahead of the ban – historically some of the other fuels which have been developed, or are in development, are hydrogen and hydrogen cells, there is even a compressed air and a solar powered car, the Lightyear one.
Companies like JCB in the UK are working on converting their diesel engines to hydrogen combustion engines. In effect they will still be heavy duty combustion engines but the fuel burned will not be petrol.
The bottom line is that the countries which are rebelling would like a less cut and dried solution and moderation of the ban to allow some other carbon neutral options, other than just electric cars. Germany believes that existing vehicles should not automatically be made obsolete, but a way should be found to keep them on the road just converted to use other less harmful fuels. Here’s an idea we wrote about a couple of years ago, a swamp gas methane powered motorcycle – think it could catch on?
So the EU and the US want the sale of new combustion engines banned after 2035 but the opposition is growing which might lead to a political stalemate and problems between nations over the issue – we shall see. How do you feel about this issue? Let us know…
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