Euro 7, Iveco CEO: “The standards of this technology are stupid”
New controversy over the green car in Europe. In the same hours in which the European Union approves, not without haste, the regulation on the stop to the sale of diesel and petrol cars from 2035, a new very tough position has arrived on the work of Brussels. The clash is about the rules related to Euro 7 technology. Iveco CEO Gerrit Marx has in fact defined “just stupid” the Euro 7 standardswhich tighten emission limits for vehicle pollutants, including nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide, starting in 2025.
Marx stated that the legislation, as currently proposed by the EU, requires cuts in emissions of nitrogen oxides and particulates which are “technically unfeasible”. Marx is only the latest of the managers who criticize the decision to promote a technology that requires enormous investments and which will retire quickly given the bans linked to 2035. But no one had ever railed against the Commission in such peremptory terms.
Confusion and Brussels
According to Marx the new Euro 7 standards are “complete nonsense”, rooted in the “dysfunctional political system” of the Union, in which different commissioners with different political agendas push for often conflicting laws. For the CEO of Iveco, in Brussels it has now become acceptable to whip the automotive industry “for the sole fact that we deserve it after the dieselgate”.
This year the European Parliament and member countries will have to negotiate the Euro 7 legislation, which would apply to cars and vans from July 2025 and to buses and trucks two years later. In parallel, the EU Commission has proposed stricter limits on CO2 emissions for heavy commercial vehicles, imposing new trucks to reduce emissions by 90% by 2040 and to all new city buses zero emissions starting from 2030.
Huge effort for Euro 7
According to Marx, faced with companies that produce trucks and buses that already have to reduce CO2 emissions so drastically, it makes no sense that there are also Euro 7 standards at the same time that impose strict limits on already existing engines, requiring considerable investments in the short term. “The effort to achieve this goal is enormous. And there’s no real coming back”Marx said. “As far as commercial vehicles are concerned, it is not correct to impose such restrictive Euro 7 regulations and, at the same time, very strict regulations on CO2,” commented the German CEO of Iveco.
Electrification is not enough
Iveco is evaluating the long-term decarbonisation options: the simple electrification is not considered a suitable technology for some of its businesses, including trucks and long-distance buses. Marx sees it as reasonable that in the long run the era of combustion engines should come to an end, “but the way it is now being imposed on industry is not right”.
Me tooThe CEO of Stellantis, Carlos Tavares, defined the part of the Euro 7 standards relating to emission limits as “useless” of combustion engines, while at that the European Association of Automobile Manufacturers said that such standards will do raise the prices of new cars without delivering the expected environmental benefits.
The transformation of Iveco
Marx then underlined that Iveco, spun off from the former parent company CNH Industrial and listed separately at the beginning of 2022, has entered its “second year of transformation”. “We will shape our group. We will focus more on some parts of our business and reduce the focus on others”, explained the CEO, adding that decisions will be based “on the return on investment, financing capacity and future growth potential”. “During 2023 and 2024, we may engage in the purchase of a business and we may consider the sale of one or another part of the Iveco group“, concluded Marx who in any case excludes the sale of the group’s defense business.