The Euro 7 regulation could be the final blow for diesel and petrol cars

That, across the successive Euro regulations on emissions of toxic and greenhouse gases, traditional engines are being progressively pushed to the wall is an irrefutable reality. With a scenario in which, in just over a month, carbon dioxide emissions per kilometre driven will be limited to 95 grams, electrification becomes the necessary passport to achieve average figures that, in theory, and to put it another way, in practice comply with these parameters.

And, although following the retirement of the NEDC homologation cycle in favour of WLTP, which entailed a reformulation of the tests to which vehicles are subjected to establish their official consumption and emissions figures, doubts and complaints have not ceased, especially regarding plug-in hybrid SUVs and vehicles powered by compressed natural gas.

Be that as it may, what also seems a more than foreseeable outcome is that, the time will come when there will be no new diesel or petrol cars, with engines reduced to either hybrids or fully electric ones. It will then be that traditional engines disappear from dealerships.

Now, as we have been suffering during this pandemic, the members of the European Union, those that are and those that will not be, do not seem to show a common line on the issue of ending the sale of new diesel or petrol cars, and seem to be fighting this war against the greenhouse effect each nation on its own.

On one hand, countries such as Spain have already announced, unofficially, officially or as a trial balloon, the year in which diesel or petrol engines would be sentenced to death, showing a continuous adjustment of the proposal until it seems this would not happen until 2040.

Others, however, such as the United Kingdom, have announced that, Brexit or not, they would subject these vehicles to extinction from 2030. But a step further, or rather closer, since this moratorium would be accelerated, would be the case of Norway which, in a show of being a champion of electrified mobility, would sentence to commercial veto any car that did not adopt an electrified powertrain by 2025.

If there is no will for unity, it will have to be imposed

And this last country may simply become the first to accept what the European Union is already proposing and which, according to the German media outlet Bild, would be accelerated from the next Euro 7 regulation that would literally choke CO2 emissions from combustion engines.

In connection with the information handled by Bild, the procedure to end the sale of all cars that were not hybrid or electric would be remarkably simple: it would suffice to limit the CO2 emissions permitted to levels unattainable for traditional engines, both technologically and economically, through penalties on manufacturers for excess production, bearing in mind that a yoke would begin to be placed on others whose nature and homologation has already been questioned, as is the case in Spain with some cars bearing the ECO or CERO label.

Be that as it may, the European Commission plans to launch the new legal protocol that will serve as a reference for the expulsion of toxic gases in 2025, which would accelerate, whether member states act individually or not, the end of the sale of petrol or diesel cars within a period of less than 5 years.