Meeting Europe’s tougher CO2 regulations is intensifying the pressure on the people penning vehicles.
“In the last five to 10 years designing cars has gotten a hell of a lot tougher,” Opel/Vauxhall design chief Mark Adams told the Automotive News Europe Congress in Brussels.
The European Union has agreed on a compromise to enforce stricter rules on CO2 emissions for cars sold in the region, ending months of wrangling after Germany insisted that an earlier deal be discarded.
To understand why automakers are gung-ho about free trade talks between the United States and Europe, consider this number: $550 million.
Berlin prosecutors are investigating ex-German state minister Eckart von Klaeden over a potential conflict of interest after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s former ally joined carmaker Daimler as a lobbyist, a spokeswoman for the prosecutors confirmed on Sunday after a media report.
European Union environment ministers agreed to German demands to scrap an agreement to cap average EU new-car emissions at 95 grams per kilometer in 2020 from about 130/g/km now after Berlin argued the target would cost jobs and damage its premium automakers.
