Brussels, 16 February 2011 – The CO2 legislation for light commercial vehicles, adopted today by the European Parliament following an agreement with the EU Council, sets extremely challenging targets in particular for the long term.

“The goalposts are now set and the automobile industry will do its utmost to meet these targets”, said Ivan Hodac, Secretary General of the industry’s trade association ACEA. “However, especially the long-term objectives will be challenging. They will require the market introduction of breakthrough technologies that are far away from being a viable business option.”

Affordability is a key point because transporters and vans are bought by commercial operators, whose purchase criteria are determined by their businesses. Lead-time is essential to sustain investments and adapt vehicles at a reasonable time in their product cycle, keeping them affordable and, hence, facilitating the fleet renewal that is necessary to achieve cuts in transport CO2 emissions. Light commercial vehicles have a substantially longer development phase as well as product cycle than passenger cars. In other cases, load factor, load volume or interior (re)fitting may be the dominant issue, with subsequent limited opportunity to change the vehicle specifications that most determine fuel efficiency.

About ACEA
The European automotive industry is key to the strength and competitiveness of Europe. The ACEA members are BMW Group, DAF Trucks, Daimler, FIAT S.p.A., Ford of Europe, General Motors Europe, Jaguar Land Rover, MAN Truck & Bus, Porsche, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Renault Group, Scania, Toyota Motor Europe, Volkswagen Group, Volvo Car Corporation, Volvo Group. They provide direct employment to more than 2.3 million people and indirectly support another 10 million jobs. ACEA members annually invest over €26 billion in R&D, or about 5% of turnover.

The ACEA commercial vehicle members are DAF Trucks, Daimler Trucks, IVECO, MAN Truck & Bus, Scania, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles and Volvo Group.

For further information, please contact Sigrid de Vries, Director Communications ACEA +32 2 738 73 45 or sv@acea.be
Please also visit www.acea.be