Why Europe can’t afford to slow down on EV adoption and ease CO2 targets 

In het kort:  

• European carmakers have known electrification was coming for decades; the current push for regulatory flexibility is understandable, but short-sighted 

• Battery EVs are a superior product in almost every meaningful way: performance, durability, urban livability, energy costs 

• Europe’s strategic future depends on keeping the EV value chain on the continent and under European governance 

• Easing the rules now hands the market to players like China and locks Europe out of the industries of the future 

• Charging infrastructure is a strategic asset, the interface between vehicles and energy networks, and it needs to stay European 

Europe’s car industry is one of the most sophisticated manufacturing ecosystems on the planet. It employs millions of people and has for decades set the standard for what a serious, globally competitive industrial sector looks like. 

Right now, parts of that industry are asking the EU to ease up on CO2 fleet emissions targets, to give manufacturers more flexibility, more time, more room to manoeuvre on the pace of electrification. 

The reasons behind this are understandable. But the ask is wrong – and the timing could hardly be worse. 

The CO2 roadmap has been clear for 30 years 

Europe’s CO2 fleet emissions framework has been in place since the late 1990s. It was designed as a staircase – a series of progressively tighter targets that gave manufacturers clear, long-term visibility over where the regulatory floor was heading. Therefore, the 95 grams of CO2 per kilometre average that applied to the 2025 sales year wasn’t a shock announcement. In fact, it was the destination that automakers had been watching approach for the better part of three decades. 

Any serious company with a product planning department and a strategy function – which is every major European carmaker – has had this on their horizon for a very long time. The argument that the industry has been caught off guard doesn’t hold up. 

What has genuinely disrupted the traditional model is something different. The electric vehicle doesn’t just change the powertrain. The entire business model that European carmakers have built their profitability around has changed, too. 

A combustion engine car (ICE) comes with a four- or five-year warranty that brings customers back to the dealership for annual servicing, oil changes, and the long tail of repairs that generates as much revenue as the original sale. An EV largely removes that income stream. The motor needs almost no maintenance. The customer doesn’t come back, at least not for the same reasons. 

The dealer network model is also under structural pressure. For years, carmakers in the major European markets owned their dealer networks. Now, because of the financial strain of running those networks through the transition, most have sold them off to independent retail groups. These groups are not particularly enthusiastic about selling EVs that won’t generate the after-sales revenue ICE vehicles do, either. 

These are real pressures – and they deserve to be taken seriously. But they are transition pressures, not arguments against the destination. 

Slowing down while Tesla and Chinese EV brands speed up is not a strategy 

The case being made by some manufacturers goes roughly like this: “EVs are expensive to produce, margins are thin, consumers aren’t ready, the infrastructure isn’t there. Give us more time.” 

The problem with this argument is that it ignores what happens if European manufacturers use that time to slow down while everyone else speeds up. 

Tesla doesn’t have a combustion engine business to protect. It never did. It has spent its entire existence optimising for a single product type, and it now has a manufacturing and software advantage that took years to build and will take years to close. The leading Chinese brands, most of them heavily backed by the state as strategic industries, are in a structurally similar position. No legacy or dealer network to placate, nor service revenue to lose. 

If the European industry eases its foot off the electric pedal, it doesn’t get breathing room. It does, however, get left behind by competitors who are not waiting. The gap that exists today becomes the chasm that defines the next decade. 

And there’s a deeper strategic problem. The US has effectively shut Chinese EVs out of its market entirely. Canada has moved in the same direction. Europe is debating tariffs. What this means in practice is that Chinese manufacturers – producing at scale, with state backing, at costs that European firms cannot currently match – are targeting the European market as their primary export outlet. If European carmakers are making fewer EVs and competing less aggressively on price and product, that space gets filled. Quickly. 

The short-term benefit to European consumers of cheaper imported EVs cannot be ignored. But the long-term consequence of hollowing out European EV manufacturing is far more serious. 

Batteries, software, charging infrastructure: the EV value chain Europe must keep at home 

Not everything in the EV value chain carries the same strategic weight. 

Where a carmaker sources its seats, its dashboard components, or its carpeting is essentially a logistics question. Global supply chains for commodity components are fine. That’s not where Europe’s industrial future is at stake. 

The things that matter strategically are different:  

• battery cell manufacturing 

• vehicle control software 

• charging infrastructure 

These are not interchangeable with any other part of the supply chain. They are the components that determine performance, longevity, intelligence, and – critically – the relationship between the vehicle and the energy network it draws from. 

Battery manufacturing is the most obvious one. European gigafactory projects are already underway. With the right policy support, Europe has a real chance to build genuine capacity here rather than remaining dependent on imports from China. The economics of battery recycling, which currently happens mostly in China because of cheap energy, also need to be brought onshore as part of the same ambition. 

But charging infrastructure deserves just as much strategic attention – and gets considerably less. 

Every public charge point is a node in a network that connects millions of vehicles to the European electricity grid. The software that manages those connections – deciding when to charge, at what speed, how to respond to grid signals, how to handle payment, and how to report data to regulators – is not a commodity layer. It is infrastructure.

And infrastructure that touches national energy systems needs to be governed by European rules, built with European technology, and free from the kind of vulnerabilities that come with dependence on suppliers from non-European states. 

As EVs become a meaningful share of the vehicles on European roads, their collective charging behaviour becomes a significant factor in grid stability. The software platforms that manage that behaviour have a real influence over how energy flows across the continent. That’s not something Europe should be relaxed about ceding to external actors. 

At Last Mile Solutions, we’ve been building European charging infrastructure software for over twenty years. When I think about what it means for that infrastructure to be European – accountable, transparent, built to European standards, without back doors – I think about it not just as a business proposition but as an industrial responsibility. The interface between the car and the grid needs to stay in European hands. 

The real reason Europe must stay the course on electrification? Energy independence 

The most exciting part of the conversation is often underplayed. 

If Europe stays the course on electrification, it’s positioning itself for something genuinely transformative. It should keep the 2035 target firm, back it with grid investment and permitting reform, and build out the battery and charging infrastructure value chain at home. 

The combination of rapidly scaling renewable energy generation and a growing fleet of electric vehicles creates the conditions for a kind of energy sovereignty that Europe has never had.

Wind and solar are intermittent, but EVs are distributed storage. Managed intelligently – through the kind of smart charging systems that are already operating at scale in places like Rotterdam – a large enough EV fleet can absorb excess renewable generation when supply is high and release it when demand peaks. 

The result, over time, is a continent that is not just less dependent on imported fossil fuels, but genuinely capable of running on its own clean energy, with vehicles as an active part of the grid rather than just a load on it. That is energy independence in a form that was not available before electrification made it possible. 

Easing off the CO2 targets now, slowing the pace of EV adoption, giving manufacturers the flexibility to keep producing combustion engines longer – all delays the moment when that vision becomes achievable. It also risks leaving Europe on the wrong side of a global industrial shift that will not wait. 

The road ahead is electric. Europe should be in the driver’s seat. 

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At Last Mile Solutions, we believe charging infrastructure is strategic infrastructure – a critical layer in Europe’s energy and mobility future. That’s why we’re proud to be part of the #TakeChargeEU coalition alongside more than 200 companies across Europe’s EV value chain, calling on European leadership to keep the 2035 zero-emission target firm and back it with the policies needed to make it real. 

Want to learn more about how Last Mile Solutions is helping build Europe’s charging future?