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Germany Asks EU To Think About Banning Internal Combustion Engines By 2030

Infiniti VC-T Engine 11 photos
Photo: Infiniti
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Germany’s Bundesrat, which is the legislative body of all 16 federal states in the country, has passed a resolution that proposes that anything that is not a zero-emissions vehicle will not receive a type approval to drive on European roads by 2030.

The resolution itself has no legislative effect alone, but it shows that the country that put the internal combustion engine in cars as we know them has proposed to kill it in 2030, which is just 13 years and two months away from today.

For clarification, the proposition suggests that the European Commission should review the current practices of taxation to stimulate emission-free mobility.

In other words, the proposal suggests that the EU Commission should consider writing a bill that would decide against granting the type approval for road use of any vehicle that generates emissions.

This would lead to the ban of selling new hybrids of any kind starting with the proposed date, as long as they have internal combustion engines in them.

Evidently, selling new vehicles with internal combustion power plants would also be banned, because their manufacturers would not be able to receive the EU-type approval for road use.

It is worth noting that the decision would not directly affect existing cars on the market, which have a type approval that was granted before that date.

This means that those that would have bought a new vehicle with an internal combustion unit that has been approved for road use before the ban is enforced would have no problem driving it in Europe.

However, the taxation suggestion in the proposed legislation change could discourage consumers to buy and own cars that generate emissions. In other words, it would become too expensive for most people to use a vehicle that has an internal combustion engine.

Consumers would then be forced to ditch their conventional vehicles and get zero-emissions replacements if they can afford them. Otherwise, public transport would become the only option, but it would still have to be Eco-friendly, as the EU-type approval applies to those vehicles as well, as long as they operate on public roads.

Banning a century-old technology that has seen constant improvement and has led to changing the world is certainly a strict decision. If the breed of internal-combustion engines will die, an entire industry with hundreds of thousands of jobs is at risk.

What does Germany's Bundesrat suggest those people do once they cannot build new internal-combustion engines?

As we noted above, this proposition has no legislative effect, but Forbes notes that German regulations have previously shaped European and UNECE regulations in the past.

The only question that remains is will Germany shoot itself in the leg with this ban that could kill a few automakers and many branches of industry that are bound to the automobile? We do not think so.
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About the author: Sebastian Toma
Sebastian Toma profile photo

Sebastian's love for cars began at a young age. Little did he know that a career would emerge from this passion (and that it would not, sadly, involve being a professional racecar driver). In over fourteen years, he got behind the wheel of several hundred vehicles and in the offices of the most important car publications in his homeland.
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