The head of Stellantis Corporation, within the framework of the Freedom of Mobility Forum, said that mass electrification of road transport is impossible without a radical reduction mass of batteries, otherwise there will be no desired environmental effect.
This is not the first time Carlos Tavares has criticized electric vehicles and is one of the proponents of a balanced, multi-energy approach to improving the environmental performance of road transport. EU authorities intend to introduce a ban on the sale of new cars and light commercial vehicles with internal combustion engines powered by fossil fuels in 2035 — thus leaving no choice for mass automakers interested in the EU market, and encouraging them to switch completely to electric vehicles in over the next ten years. Many companies do not like this prospect due to the number of disadvantages that electric vehicles have, including their large mass.
The European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA), of which Carlos Tavares was previously president, has consistently opposed the rabid imposition of electric vehicles for many years, but in 2022 Tavares considered the lobbying activities of this organization ineffective. At the instigation of Tavares and the Stellantis Corporation, in fact, the Freedom of Mobility Forum was created as an alternative structure that provides a comprehensive, scientific view of the problems of environmental friendliness of road transport. Of course, Carlos Tavares is one of the main speakers of this Forum.
Carlos Tavares
This year, Carlos Tavares, speaking at the Forum, said (the words of the top manager are quoted by Automotive News Europe) that at the moment, to produce one electric car you need about half a ton of “excess” raw materials (compared to the mass of raw materials needed to produce a car with ICE) in order to supply it with a battery of acceptable capacity, and this, to put it mildly, is not environmentally friendly. According to Tavares, a mass transition to electric vehicles is impossible without a radical reduction (by at least 50%) in the mass of batteries and the raw materials used for their production, and this requires a technological leap. The automotive industry and a wide range of scientists are working to achieve this breakthrough, but there is no result yet. This must be understood this way: since there is no result yet, then one cannot demand the complete replacement of traditional internal combustion engine cars with electric vehicles.
It is clear that electric vehicles have other disadvantages: in particular, they need to be charged somewhere, and for now, even in progressive Europe, the pace and availability of charging infrastructure does not fit in with plans to abandon internal combustion engines by 2035. In developing countries, which were represented at the Forum by Roberto Schaeffer, a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), about 800 million people have no access to electricity at all, and even more people do not have a stable power grid — so what to talk about global electrification There is no road transport yet. It will not be possible to “green” the planet only at the expense of developed countries. Simply put, we must first overcome global poverty and only then transfer everyone to “electric trains,” and if this is not possible, then we need a multi-energy approach.
Actually, without any Forums and other lobbyists, it is already clear that electric cars are not are a panacea — the global slowdown in demand for electric vehicles that began last year is the best evidence of this. The question is when and under what conditions will European officials back down and admit that the environmental problems of the automotive industry cannot be solved with electric vehicles alone. The sooner “Strategy 2035” is recognized as ineffective and unrealistic, the less money large corporations and European economies will lose, so the zeal of Carlos Tavares and his colleagues in this direction is quite understandable.
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