The European Commission's Automotive Package is a bundle of rules and measures intended to steer the transformation of the European automotive industry towards climate-neutral mobility. At its core, it involves adjusted CO2 targets for vehicles, the promotion of battery technology and requirements for company fleets.

In its position paper "Designing compliance options for manufacturers in the Automotive Package in a technology-neutral way", the VDMA advocates a more market-oriented framework that takes equal account of climate protection, competitiveness and industrial value creation. In particular, it criticizes the excessive political focus on battery-electric drives. This one-sided focus on technology could both jeopardize the achievement of climate targets and significantly weaken European value chains. Accordingly, the VDMA advocates a technology-neutral approach: instead of only looking at the emissions directly from the vehicle (tank-to-wheel), the emissions across the entire energy chain should at least be considered according to a well-to-wheel approach. In this way, all climate-friendly drive types could be further developed and make an active contribution to the transformation.

A separate vehicle category is also required for vehicles that run exclusively on renewable fuels in order to strengthen the role of alternative fuels and avoid new dependencies. Hybrid drive concepts should also remain permitted in future. Investments in alternative fuels should be incentivized through flexible control and in line with the development of electromobility.

You can find the position paper here

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