Tag: automotive

The European Commission has backtracked on earlier plans to allow modular vehicles - also known as 'mega' or 'monster' trucks - to be allowed to cross national borders.

EU lawmakers have insisted that tyre manufacturers such as Michelin and Continental must display details of tyres' fuel performance, as well as their wet grip and noise levels, as of November 2012.

France announced yesterday (28 February) that its draft bail-out plan for the automobile industry will not contravene EU internal market rules, relieving tension ahead of today's EU summit in Brussels, at which fears of rising protectionism were expected to dominate the agenda.

The announcement by the Commission on Wednesday evening (23 July) came as a blow to German trade unions and to the Land of Lower Saxony but it could give the luxury carmaker a helping hand in meeting the stringent new emissions targets planned by the EU.

With automobile manufacturers expected to miss their voluntary commitments made last year to reduce CO2 emissions, the European Commission has proposed new binding legislation. Amid pressure from the car industry, which currently finds itself weighed down by economic recession, a compromise deal on the new laws was struck in December 2008.

The European Commission has announced a new partnership with the automotive industry aimed at better anticipating and coping with recent developments in the sector, including intensified international competition and increasing regulatory pressure to reduce the environmental impacts and security risks related to car use.

As carmakers ready to show off their 'greenest' models at the International Motor Show in Frankfurt, the environmental lobby Transport and Environment revealed new figures revealing the industry's close-to-nil progress made towards cutting carbon dioxide emissions in the past year.

While the EU's 27 environment ministers agree on the need to reduce car emissions in order to tackle climate change, they remain divided on how the burden of these reductions should be spread out among the industry.

Automotive suppliers association CLEPA recently formalised a proposal for worldwide harmonised technical regulation for automotive safety glazing, that it hopes will be endorsed on a global scale.

Partly bowing to critics who attacked the group for being only open to car manufacturers, the Commission has launched a wide consultation on the "CARS 21" initiative to boost the long-term competitiveness of the EU car industry.

The paper states that the expansion of road infrastructure in Germany has fallen far behind traffic growth in the recent years, which could impede Germany's further economic development.