Change in transport: 400 million combustion cars too many
Despite rising sales figures for electric cars, the number of combustion cars remains too high. If politicians still want to achieve the 1.5-degree target, stricter measures against traffic emissions must be taken - regardless of the plans of the car industry?!
More and more electric vehicles are coming onto the roads of Germany and Europe. Electric cars even became the best-selling vehicles last September. Nevertheless, combustion vehicles do not seem to want to give up - and neither does the car industry that backs them. According to an analysis by Greenpeace, industry manufacturers such as Volkswagen, BMW and Toyota will still sell over 700 million fossil-fuel cars by 2040. 400 million internal combustion cars too many. Because the inventory limit, as the non-profit organisation itself reminds us, is about 315 million internal combustion cars within the framework of the climate targets. This is the only way to keep the earth's temperature below the critical value, namely an increase of no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The study is based on figures, reports and operating projections of the car companies themselves and was evaluated by Greenpeace in cooperation with numerous universities and research institutes. However, the analysis is still only a forecast, which can only be verified in retrospect. Just as studies from a few years ago could not predict today's situation regarding the transport and car sector with absolute certainty.
Nevertheless, the results of the study remain highly plausible. While the majority of car manufacturers have clear plans to switch to electric or other alternative powertrains, they need the revenues currently generated by the resale of internal combustion vehicles to finance future greener vehicle production. At the same time, which certainly does not come as a surprise, they will continue to look for profits wherever they can. Including those on the sale of the many diesel and petrol vehicles that continue to contribute significantly to the negative environmental footprint of the transport sector.
However, the fact that car manufacturers still strongly insist on diesel and petrol cars does not mean that the stock of such vehicles, as well as their (climate-damaging) emissions on the roads, cannot be counteracted and mitigated. If the corporations are to continue to put fossil drives on the car market in large quantities, authorities - for instance at national, or in any case at European level - could take stricter positions towards climate-damaging drives. And not only in the context of the phasing out of internal combustion engines from 2035, but also earlier, for example through emission-reducing traffic measures - such as driving bans and environmental zones. After all, if there were to be stricter environmental zones everywhere, there would be no more room for vehicles with combustion engines. Neither on the roads nor on the car market.