Transport & Environment

Fully electric cars, BEVs as we call them, battery electric vehicles, have now outsold petrol and diesel cars combined in the European Union's Q3 registrations.

They took 27% of the new car market, according to Transport and Environment.

Hybrids are the largest category, though.

Full and mild hybrids are counted separately from petrol and diesel cars.

Cheaper models are helping buyers make the switch alongside Chinese arrivals like BYD and the little Dolphin Surf.

Both European and Korean manufacturers are adding smaller EVs.

Transport and Environment expects 16 models starting below €25,000 to be available by the end of this year.

That's double last year's number.

They are actively buying up land and reviving old decommissioned European auto plants.

Recent market studies by Transport and Environment confirmed that Chinese EV makers are aggressively accelerating their local production footprint across the continent.

Ten planned facilities have been announced since the EU launched its anti-subsidy investigation.

The tariff did not erase the Chinese competitor.

It's a problem the industry and organisations like the IPCC call Indirect Land Use Change or ILUC.

And when ILUC is factored in, some analyses, including recent reports from groups like the European Federation for Transport and Environment, find that certain biofuels emit as much or even more CO2 than the fossil fuels they replace.

It's not just the USA either, although that country is by far the worst offender as this chart clearly shows.

Brazil, Europe, Indonesia and several other countries dominate the global biofuel market with demand expected to rise by 40% by 2030.

Trump hints that the end of the Canada trade fight is near, and Toyota sees a new business in selling its powertrains to rivals.

Plus, Lucien Mathieu, Cars Director at Transport and Environment, talks about why plug-in hybrids look cleaner in the lab than on the road.

and what that means for Europe's emissions targets.

On the road, in real

And you can read more of Jack's reporting on Audi's plans for a new Georgia plan at autonews.com. Automakers have leaned on plug-in hybrids to keep gas engines in the lineup while meeting tougher emissions rules in Europe.

But a new analysis questions whether the official numbers hold up on the road.

The European Advocacy Group, Transport and Environment, studied European Commission data on how plug-in hybrids are really driven.

Europe is set to adjust how it counts their emissions on November 1st, but some politicians want to freeze that change.

I'm Molly Boigon, tech and innovation reporter at Automotive News.

Our guest today is Lucien Mathieu, cars director at Transport & Environment.

We spoke about T&E data showing that plug-in hybrids emit nearly the same amount of carbon dioxide as combustion engine cars.

We do see some slight differences between car makers, but to be honest, for all of them, the trend has been worsening over time.

So we have lots of lovely retired people who do want leisure travel and families that might want leisure travel.

And the thing that Transport for Wales have really understood is the economic power of that.

So we, as you know, in Shrewsbury are an English town on a Welsh network with a Welsh operator running our beautiful station.

And they're not allowed to spend Welsh taxpayers' money in England, but they absolutely love taking English fair payers' money into the Welsh network because we are a contributor, a net contributor into the network.

I have 81 people standing.

I have passengers left on the platform, the ones trying to get that connection from Birmingham.

The last time that an additional carriage was added by Transport for Wales on one of our services, ticket sales went up by 18%.

So one extra carriage, not just that people can sit down, but another load of people can now buy a ticket.

While it's clearly an improvement upon the Commission's strategy, which had no basic involvement of rail whatsoever, but lots of the proposals have been significantly weakened to get that high level of support.

Some of the elements that were advocated for by, and this is me referring to some of the work being done by Transport and Environment, kind of European... think tank on this sort of thing do a lot of good work so good things expanding the geographical scope beyond the EU's borders including London, Oslo, Lviv finding new financing mechanisms like the use of electricity crediting mechanisms you know charging infrastructure for EVs has been benefiting from this for years so it makes sense to do it for rail and yet the commission is still not really pushing for it But there are some problems.

Of course there are.

It's Europe.

The International Council on Clean Transportation found that the average on-road emissions were five times the official figure.

T&E, Transport and Environment, found it was six times, as I mentioned.

So keeping this favourable accounting is not the same as what happens in the real world, but that'll be... argued, of course, because it's not in their interests to represent the real world emissions of plug-in hybrids.

They want more credit for it.

So if you're buying a used EV, you're on average financing £19,152 on average.

A study commissioned by the environmental campaign group Transport and Environment helps explain why the old depreciation headlines need care.

It compared Germany, France, Italy, and Spain.

And the researchers there adjusted for factors including subsidies and inflation.