The decision by the German government to take into account the relative weight of a vehicule into the car Co2 labelling goes against all the environmental logic.

Any carbon labelling should be about absolutes. Why dividing by the weight or size? People are not stupid, they know that if they buy a bigger car, it will have more emissions.

What would be the incentives for car companies to decrease the weight of the car and therefore reduce fuel consumption?

There are car manufacturers such as Jaguar investing millions in aluminium-based light weight vehicles, which enables lower size engines , with the aim of reducing emissions by 16%. What is the message from Germany? Put more steel and a bit of lead and a couple of rocks on the top to achieve A rating.

It’s unbelievable how after the crisis, several countries are dismissing European competition rules and use the environment as the excuse for protectionism.

I wonder what rah-rah the big German manufacturers would be taking about stakeholder engagement and transparency in their sustainability reports while lobbying so intensely for a carbon tax that goes against all the environmental logic.

See article in the FT

The best system in Europe is the French labelling system. It has a bonus-malus where cars under 126g CO2/km get money back and cars over 155g pay more. This has been quite succesful. The emission from new cars has been reduced from 149g CO² /km  to 133g CO²/km in a couple of years.  See below how easy it is.