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I know there are people in Europe who don’t agree with this assumption, but I and others have long said that Tesla was critical to the European Union’s electric vehicle sales rise. The argument against that is that the European Union (EU) had set a plan to cut CO2 emissions in the auto sector long before Tesla rose to prominence — in 2009 and then more strictly in 2014.
That is fine and all, and maybe it’s true that the EU was going to stick to its guns, but I remember well that there was constant, significant lobbying from the German auto industry as well as even stronger anti-EV sentiment from the Italian auto industry. The claim in general across the legacy auto industry was that consumers simply didn’t want to buy electric vehicles and automakers shouldn’t be forced to produce too many of them and sell them at a loss.
Then, Tesla launched the Model 3, millions of people lined up early in the morning, around the world, down streets and around buildings, to reserve the electric car. Tesla proved that people did want compelling, semi-affordable electric cars. That effectively shut down the EU auto industry lobbying in my opinion. Policymakers decided that legacy auto just needed to try harder, do better, and find a way to compete with Tesla. Otherwise, no softening/weakening of EU regulations would help them.
EV enthusiasts then assumed we won. At the beginning of the 2020s, EV sales soared in the EU, taking more and more market share. There was no turning back. Or so we thought.
As we’ve seen, Tesla sales have dropped worldwide in the past couple of years, and they’ve dropped tremendously in Europe this year — thanks in large part to Elon Musk becoming a political extremist.
And what have we gotten in Europe as that has happened? The EU has watered down its auto industry requirements. On that matter, here’s one recent story worth checking out: “EU 2035 Reversal: Playing for Time Won’t Make European Carmakers Great Again.” There was also the change earlier this year allowing automakers to achieve CO2 reduction requirements for 2025–2027 as an average across those years rather than meeting the originally set targets for 2025, 2026, and 2027. Maybe this all would have happened anyway. Maybe this was coming no matter what. However, in my opinion, this is again related to Tesla and evidence that the EU’s auto industry would have gotten its way several years ago and gotten CO2 regulations watered down if Tesla hadn’t put so much pressure on, and hadn’t proved that consumers did want EVs.
Let’s just hope it doesn’t go further now, that EV policies don’t get further weakened. And, despite all the issues that have followed, we should still be happy that Tesla launched the Model 3, scaled up, and forced the legacy auto industry to take vehicle electrification seriously. (Now, commence people telling me I’m wrong and Tesla didn’t influence EU auto industry policies.)
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