Car companies must meet the EU fleet emissions standards and the only way most car companies will achieve that is by selling BEVs. Volkswagen and Renault are the top two BEV makers in Europe.

Toyota is in a good position with their fleet emissions because they've been selling hybrids for so long. They're not under as much pressure to start selling BEVs in high volumes.

Yes, the emission standards have forced the car manufacturers to offer electric cars. But how does it explain that customers are buying them? Even so much that there are long waiting times when you order an electric car.

The answer is: there are enough customers interested in buying an electric cars but both the available product range and production count limited their ability to do so. With the offerings of electric cars improving, the consumers are happily buying into them.

The car makers are taking a loss/low margin on BEVs sales . Pricing is tuned such that they can sell enough BEVs to meet the regulated fleet efficiency, but no more than that.

Which only means that the customer is of course taking the price into account when buying new cars. As the production costs of electric cars are coming down considerably (manufacturing scaling, battery costs), the prices are coming down and very soon there will be the same margin as with petrol cars. Never mention Tesla, who don't have the problem of compensating their ICE car emissions.

EU CAFE regulation virtually increases (not efficient) ICE car price and decreases EV car price.

I'm not sure that is the whole picture. VW in particular seems to be betting the company on electric.

It looks to me that Toyota has thrown away a huge advantage. Thet could have had an early lead with their experience with hybrids.

It probably won't matter that much. Toyota will start offering BEVs in large volumes eventually. They'll be Toyotas with a different powertrain.

What is a BEV. Had a quick scan, but can’t see a definition.

(Edit) Battery Electric Vehicle

Your first and second paragraph contradict each other. Even though Toyota doesn't offer a single BEV in their lineup, they are completely fine with the stricter emission standards.

Nobody is forcing anyone to sell BEVs, what is forced is efficiency. Full BEV is only one way to achieve that goal. Look at Hyundai Ioniq hybrid - a perfectly capable midsize family car, affordable, introduced to the market in 2017. It will meet emission standards all the way until 2029.

I'm talking about the targets for emissions across the entire fleet, not for the emissions of individual models.

Volkswagen must sell BEVs to meet its fleet emissions standards. Unfortunately for them, they missed their 2020 target so they will be paying a fine:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-idUS...

Volkswagen doesn't want to waste money on fines so they've made a big commitment to EVs. They've become the biggest BEV maker in Europe and in time they'll be the biggest BEV maker world wide, which isn't that surprising. Volkswagen owns 12 automotive brands and they're the world's biggest car company.

Toyota now sells the full-electric Lexus UX 300e in Europe, so it’s no longer true that they “don’t offer a single BEV”.

The specs of that car suggest that they want it to fail. It's not competitive to the EVs out there and is too expensive.

It has a bit more range as my Renault Zoe. Which is now 4 years old. It feels to me that this Lexus is nothing more than a compliance car.

You may well be right. But they do offer a single EV!

And more to follow:

https://electrek.co/2020/12/07/toyota-electric-suv-battery-e...

To be fair there are heavy subsidies for electric cars in Germany.

They existed years ago and I am skeptical that they are significant enough to make the average person even consider a new electric car. They are still too expensive for what they offer, even with heavy subsidies.

However, what I do see in Germany, are more and more electric cars in car sharing, rentals and company fleets. Upper middle class is going pretty electric as well to appear cool/caring about climate. Several Teslas in front of my building now since the new upper middle class apartments went up across the street. Several Audi e-Trons in the area as well. What's curiously missing is the ID.3 somehow - I expected to see many more at this point.

Volkswagen and many other well-known manufacturers are pushing out really decent electric models. I see a ton of Renault Zoes cruising around, electric Smarts as well. They simply fit well into the European market which is dominated by dense cities and short commutes (<100km).

Yes, right now electric vehicles are certainly an "upper middle class" thing. But that's largely because EVs are still new and the "average" person just can't afford to buy a brand new car every few years.

However, in 5-10 years we should start to see a mature market for good quality used EVs, making them much more accessible. At that point, better reliability, better driving experience, much lower operating costs, etc will make EVs the obvious choice for many, if not most, buyers.

> They are still too expensive for what they offer, even with heavy subsidies.

The average price paid for new US cars was $40K [0]. There are now plenty of models below that without subsidy, including Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf, VW ID4, Kia Niro, Hyundai Kona and even the low end of the Tesla 3. That's just the upfront price, of course TCO is lower than a same price ICE car because fuel and maintenance are lower.

[0] https://www.carscoops.com/2021/01/average-new-car-prices-in-...

What was the median price paid for new US cars?

> They are still too expensive for what they offer, even with heavy subsidies.

> Renault Zoes

In Berlin, Renault Zoes were (maybe still are?) _free_[0] to get for small businesses. I know multiple freelancers who took advantage of that deal. Yes, that might not be the "average person", but it's probably not insignificant either.

[0]: https://efahrer.chip.de/news/elektroauto-gratis-leasen-so-ko...

Yes, there are. About 6k per car. But this just preempts the price development in a growing market. And it helps the market to grow to a point where the cars do get cheaper because of scaling. On the other side: fossil fuels and especially car combustion engines are not taxed along the negative impact they have by toxic and carbon emissions.

If we want to tax combustion engines for negative externalities what deductions are we giving for the positive externalities?

better air quality, reduced risk of lung disease, longer, better lives?

The air quality in the west is better than it is in much less developed areas of the world. People live longer because of the use of fossil fuel and can live better lives spending less time on basic things like creating food and managing shelter to stay alive and they have more time doing meaningful things.

Fossil fuel industry is the industry that have made it possible for us to live longer, and feed as many people as we want while at the same time making the environments much cleaner over time.

> than it is in much less developed areas of the world

I believe Amazonia air quality is much better than air quality in Milan (where I lived for 10 years).

https://www.iqair.com/italy/lombardy/milano

> Fossil fuel industry is the industry that have made it possible for us to live longer

I'm not at war with fossil fuel industry, I was simply answering to this question

> what deductions are we giving for the positive externalities?

My dad worked in pulmonary oncology for 35 years, I think that better air quality, less lung disease and better overall environment is a reward itself, that's the prize we get for positive externalities (and in case of EVs the State incentives, in Italy they are up to 10k euros if you buy a new EV car and get rid of an old ICE one).

I was talking about the deductions for positive externalities of fossile fuel.

> I was talking about the deductions for positive externalities of fossile fuel.

There have been State incentives for at least two decades to buy new cars that produced less emissions on fossil fuels.

Fossil fuel industry benefitted of enormous deductions for over a century for their contribution to the industrial revolutions.

For example they never pay for the disasters they create [0][1].

[0] The oil spill of the Exxon Valdez in 1989 only costed $ 125 million to Exxon https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-and-state-alask...

[1] even when they paid a just fine (like the 60 billion BP paid for the spill in the Gulf of Mexico) it's peanuts compared to the environmental damages that the future generations will inherit (the mangroves still carry the damages from the Ixtoc spill of 1979, 40 years later)

Ixtoc soiled hundreds of miles of beaches, all the way to Texas. The fishermen also said that oysters that used to be found clinging to the mangrove roots seemed to have vanished after the spill and never returned.

There is “force being applied” in the form of EU fleet-wide emissions requirements.

Automakers must sell increasing numbers of full electric and/or hybrid vehicles in order to meet their emissions targets, otherwise they face potentially huge fines.

This can only force the auto makers to make electric cars attractive, but the customer does have a choice and chooses more electric cars.

This claim is completely false. As others pointed out the EU applies stricter and stricter emission regulations each year forcing all manufacturers to comply.