Under the pressure of increasingly stringent anti-pollution standards, automakers are setting their own combustion engine release schedules one after the other.
This weekend, the German group Volkswagen has made commitments.
“We will make our entire fleet CO2 neutral by 2050 at the latest.
In Europe, we will be leaving the combustion engine vehicle market between 2033 and 2035, ”said Klaus Zellmer, VW sales director in an interview with the Bavarian daily
Münchner Merkur
, available online this Sunday.
This release will take place “a little later in the United States and China.
In South America and Africa, due to the lack of political framework conditions and infrastructure, it will take a little longer, ”he added.
An investment of 46 billion euros in five years
The VW brand had already announced at the beginning of the year to reach by 2030 an electric share in its European sales of 70%. “As a mass manufacturer, VW has to adapt to the different speeds of transformation in different regions. Our competitors who sell vehicles mainly in Europe, for example, will certainly have to face a much less complex transformation (…) ”, explains Klaus Zellmer to explain this less ambitious schedule than other manufacturers.
The high-end brand Audi, also a subsidiary of the Volkswagen group, announced last week that it wanted to stop producing vehicles equipped with combustion engines by 2033, with a possible exception also in China.
The entire Volkswagen group has planned to invest 46 billion euros in five years in its electric shift.
These announcements come as the European Union will unveil on July 14 strengthened objectives for reducing CO2 emissions by 2030, as well as regulatory proposals.
These will force many manufacturers to accelerate the reduction of their emissions and their transition to electric.
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