Worrying trend in electric vehicle sales in Portugal

ZERO, an association born in 2015 with the goal of achieving sustainable development in Portugal, warns about the worrying trend in electric vehicle sales in Portugal. They claim that Plug-in Hybrid cars are a ‘façade’, as they can cause more pollution than conventional cars.

ZERO warns of serious deficiencies in the regulation of CO2 emissions applied to new car sales in the European Union (EU),in particular since the beginning of 2020 with the introduction of the limit of 95 gCO2 / km. Although recognizing that the standards have led to some good results, these deficiencies allowed the real emissions of new cars to actually increase between 2016 and 2019, thanks to sales of sport utility vehicles, the SUV (Sport Utility Vehicles). SUVs are heavy and large automobiles, with minimal aerodynamics and in recent years they have been representing an increasingly larger share of sales, reaching 39% in the first half of 2020.

In addition, about half of the electric cars sold in the EU are plug-in hybrids ‘front’ – so considered because they have low autonomies in electric mode. They are rarely charged, have powerful internal combustion engines, and are also often large and heavy (many are SUVs), which in practice makes them present CO2 emissions two to four times higher than those recorded in the tests.
Despite this, the European regulation allows car manufacturers to promote the benefits for the sale of these cars – the super-credits, which have allowed the plug-in ‘facade’ to double for the purpose of calculating the average emissions of their fleets (this mechanism, however, is expected to be phased out from 2021).

W: https://zero.ong/