The chief executive of France’s Renault has warned new European emissions regulations could cost up to 70,000 jobs in France, despite delivering little benefit in tackling climate change.
Luca de Meo made the forecast in an interview at the Financial Times’ Future of the Car 2022 conference on Monday as he justified Renault’s decision to call for delays in implementing fresh rules from Brussels.
“Talking about the French environment and ecosystem, I think that that particular transition will probably cost 50,000 to 70,000 jobs,” he said.
De Meo fears job losses could result because the rules will potentially make cars more expensive, which could hit demand, and involve extra costs in investment.
He added: “My position is that actually that kind of set of rules will not be a huge advantage in terms of impact, but it will add a lot of cost to the car unnecessarily.”
The new rules, called Euro 7 regulations, are planned to come into force in 2025 and will impose stricter limits on carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from petrol and diesel cars, vans, trucks and buses.
De Meo said money invested in achieving Euro 7 standards, which are still to be finalised and will replace Euro 6 standards, could have been invested in developing other clean technologies.
He added that a delay to the introduction of the new rules would reduce the harm caused in terms of potential job losses.
“We’re asking for a little bit of time to manage this thing without creating collateral damage.”
De Meo was sceptical about a number of aspects of the transition to lower-carbon vehicles.
For many drivers, even a large battery, would cover only 85 per cent of vehicle use, he said. As a result, motorists would be reluctant to buy the car because it would not cover long annual trips of 600km or 700km.
If total extraction of raw materials through to a product’s manufacture, distribution and eventual disposal is included — the so-called “cradle to grave” carbon cost for vehicles — then in some cases cars with petrol engines produced fewer carbon emissions over their lifetimes, he said.
“The choice of going all-electric for everyone and everywhere is not that obvious.”
If the rules made new vehicles more expensive, it might simply prompt customers to keep old cars going, he added.
“We want to ensure that people can still afford to buy affordable new vehicles. If we don’t slow the regulations, people will continue to buy used cars and keep old cars in circulation.”
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