Valladolid (EFE).- The automotive sector in Spain assumes the need to advance in a fair transition towards the electric or connected vehicle to guarantee decarbonisation, but has asked the Government to make the application of the regulations more flexible (Euro 7 and PERTE), especially in deadlines.
“The industry is not something that can be stopped from one day to the next because it misleads and detracts investment”, explained this Thursday in Valladolid the general director of the Spanish Association of Automobile and Truck Manufacturers (ANFAC), José López-Tafall, during his participation in a national automotive congress.
More flexible terms for the automotive industry
He has thus referred, in statements to journalists, to the Euro 7 regulation that will enter into force on July 1, 2025 to regulate the limits of pollutant emissions from passenger cars and vans, the first types of vehicles to have to adapt, in only two years, to an increasingly restrictive requirement.
For the general director of ANFAC, it is difficult for manufacturers to “advance at such a demanding pace” to which 2035 is also added as the limit year for the circulation of vehicles with combustion engines: “two things at the same time is very complicated ” and the demands are “very high and onerous”, he insisted.
López-Tafall has also referred to the PERTE (Strategic Project for the Recovery and Economic Transformation) of the automotive industry, approved by the Government last October and focused on two lines: digitization and electrification of vehicles, with aid for the industrial chain from the EU.
For ANFAC, the revision of both Euro 7 and PERTE is necessary, this consequence of the first, in tune with other countries such as Germany and Italy that have proposed synthetic fuel to prolong the life of combustion engines beyond 2035.
“Either Europe reacts or we stay behind,” López-Tafall summarized regarding the dissonant voices of the United States and China on community regulations, two great industrial and market powers.
The automotive industry asks the Government to act
For all these reasons, the sector expects from the Government of Spain “a more ambitious position on the need to review Euro 7, aligned with Germany and Italy: we cannot say more clearly”, he added.
In his opinion, the PERTE should not be a point of arrival but rather a starting point with investments in the form of aid that allow the start of an industrial reconversion of the sector that in his opinion should not end in 2025, but beyond.
López-Tafall, on the other hand, has warned that a Euro 7 “poorly focused can bring continuity problems and stop the production chain”, with the consequent economic, labor and social repercussions.
Along the same lines, the president of the Automotive Cluster of Castilla y León (FaCyL), Félix Cano, has called attention to the “lack of infrastructure” to facilitate the recharging of electric vehicles, in addition to the delay in completing a process which he has estimated between three and four hours.
“You cannot put the oxen behind the cart”, he compared when addressing a process that “will take time” convinced that it will still take a long time “for the electric vehicle to be appealing to consumers”.
Automotive and Euro 7
Regarding Euro 7, the president of FaCyL has called attention to the “billion-dollar demands” to comply with the regulations.
Less forceful has been María Paz Robina, general director of Michelin in Spain and Portugal, who has referred to the automotive sector as an ecosystem in which “we all share the vision of the important and difficult challenges that lie ahead, on the need to continue betting on the mobility of the future”.
fair but orderly transition
The Future Mobility Challenges Congress began with a few words of welcome from the President of Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernádez Mañueco, who demanded that the Government of Spain make a “fair and orderly” transition, adapted “to the daily reality and the needs of the industry”.
“The path will not be easy due to some EU decisions that in any case must be ratified by the governments of each country, since they can be harmful if they are not applied intelligently”, he stated. EFE