Contents
What happened
EU countries have agreed to stop selling new cars with internal combustion engines by 2035.
Trend
Many car manufacturers have already announced plans to switch to electric car production. These include Volkswagen, BMW, Ford and Nissan.
In figures
In 2021, global sales of electric cars doubled to 4.6 million. For the first time, more electric cars were sold than hybrids.
But at the same time
According to experts, the EU’s decision poses a serious threat to the economy. Authorities and car manufacturers will also have to address the issue of effective disposal of electric car batteries.
What happened
European Union countries have signed several agreements on combating climate change.
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One of them is to stop selling new cars powered by internal combustion engines (ICEs) by 2035.
As Bloomberg noted, this means that car companies operating in the European market will have to switch to producing electric models within the next ten years.
Thanks to the measures adopted by the EU, member states expect to reduce their emissions by 55% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.
EU countries have also agreed on a common goal of obtaining 40% of their energy from renewable sources by 2030.
In addition, the EU has supported the adoption of a law requiring member states to expand forest areas and take more active care of soil and water bodies, as they are natural carbon sinks.
In figures
The popularity of electric cars is growing worldwide.
According to a ranking by analysts at the Munich exhibition centre IAA Mobility, there were around 10 million electric cars in the world by the end of 2020. China had the most with 4.2 million cars, followed by Europe with 3.2 million and the US with 1.7 million. In China, there were 3 cars per 1,000 inhabitants, in the US — 5.2, and in Europe — 6.1.
At the end of last year, global sales of electric cars doubled to 4.6 million units. In 2021, for the first time in the world, more electric cars were sold than hybrids.
According to analysts’ estimates, by 2040, the number of electric vehicles in the world will exceed 400 million.
Studies show that transport generates about 25-30% of total carbon emissions in the EU per year. Electric cars are largely capable of solving this problem. According to the International Council on Clean Transportation, carbon dioxide emissions in Europe over the entire life cycle of an electric car are 66-69% lower than those of petrol cars.
However,
experts have noted that the EU initiative, despite its environmental friendliness, has a number of drawbacks.
Inconvenient. Polish authorities have stated that they will not be able to support the EU ban on internal combustion engines. ‘We need affordable prices for these cars and all the infrastructure for them. Today, no country is ready,’ said Polish Minister of Climate and Environment Anna Moskwa.
Too fast. Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria have requested an ‘adequate transition period’ — a delay until 2040.
The problem is not with internal combustion engines. Germany pointed out that the European Union’s decision would seriously threaten car manufacturers and called for a less painful compromise — for example, switching cars from internal combustion engines to more environmentally friendly synthetic fuel. Toyota also stated that fossil fuels, not internal combustion engines, pose the greatest threat to the environment. The company itself proposes using hydrogen instead of petrol.
Threat to the economy. Analysts have previously estimated that more than 500,000 jobs in the European Union could be lost due to the ban on sales of new cars with internal combustion engines. At the same time, significantly fewer new jobs will be created — 226,000.
Difficult to dispose of. When an electric car battery reaches the end of its service life, its environmental benefits disappear, scientists note. A battery that ends up in a landfill will begin to release toxins, including heavy metals. Therefore, authorities and car manufacturers will have to establish a recycling process. Although some car manufacturers, such as Tesla, are already recycling used batteries. With the advent of the ‘electric car era,’ it will be necessary to increase the number of factories and their capacity to cope with the sharp increase in demand.
More and more of these vehicles are appearing on the roads of Asian countries. Motor vehicles are among the main sources of air pollution in Beijing, one of the most polluted cities in China and the world. In recent years, the Chinese authorities have been implementing programmes aimed at developing environmentally friendly modes of transport in order to reduce the burden on the environment. Various subsidies and incentives are available to buyers of ‘green’ cars.
In 2024–2025, China ranked first in the world in sales of electric and hybrid vehicles: 507,000 such vehicles were sold in the country over 12 months.
A large-scale network for recharging electric vehicles has been created in the country’s three largest cities: Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. For the second year in a row, the country continues to maintain its leadership in this segment of the automotive industry. To date, more than 1 million Chinese ‘green’ cars have been sold worldwide.
Hydrogen cars
Electricity or hydrogen
Currently, there is a pressing issue, which is that 60% of the electricity consumed worldwide is produced by thermal power plants.
In order to meet the increased demand for electricity, even larger quantities of hydrocarbons will have to be burned.
Even if internal combustion engines are completely replaced by electric motors, there will be a redistribution of harmful emissions, and the reduction will not be as significant. The concentration of CO2 in the air will decrease in megacities, but will increase in places where thermal power plants are located.
In addition, cars are not the only source of environmental pollution: electric ships and airplanes are not even being discussed yet.
Hydrogen energy is preferable in this sense. Hydrogen production is accompanied by microscopic emissions of toxic substances compared to the combustion of hydrocarbons. The exhaust of a hydrogen-powered car consists of 99.99% pure water vapor, which is harmless to the environment. But this raises other problems of an economic, technological, and infrastructural nature.
Advantages and disadvantages of hydrogen engines
The advantages and disadvantages of fuel cell power units stem from the characteristics of hydrogen as a fuel and the technical level of the engines. Factors considered to be unconditional advantages:
- simplicity of design and, accordingly, reliability;
- efficiency exceeding that of a gasoline engine, but inferior to that of an electric motor;
- absence of noise;
- almost complete absence of harmful emissions;
- high engine power;
- acceptable range: modern hydrogen cars can travel up to 500 kilometers on a single tank.
The disadvantages include the following:
- increased vehicle weight;
- the explosive nature of hydrogen, which increases sharply in the event of engine malfunctions;
- high vehicle operating costs.
Real-world operation shows that a kilometer traveled in a hydrogen-powered car costs at least 50% more than in a gasoline-powered car. Hydrogen consumption is several times lower than gasoline, but its price outweighs this advantage.
This is the main problem with hydrogen energy. In the form of compounds with other substances, H2 reserves on Earth are limitless, but in its pure form, it is almost non-existent. Complex technology is used to obtain it. Added to this are the problems of storage, transportation, and infrastructure creation.
The prospects for hydrogen cars
In order to fully address this issue, it is necessary to know exactly why gasoline engines are being replaced with hydrogen engines. If we are talking about the introduction of a technically more advanced engine, then from this perspective, the prospects for hydrogen cars are almost the same as for gasoline engines, slightly higher. No matter how much it is improved, the internal combustion engine has a fundamental limitation: low efficiency.
In this sense, hydrogen engines are preferable, but they are inferior to electric cars. On the other hand, it is impossible to heat the interior with clean electricity without reducing the range: the supply in the car is limited. Hydrogen engines do not have such problems: heat is released during hydrolysis.