The EU has put together a bill to reduce CO2 emissions from new light-duty vehicles by 100% by 2035 (compared to 2021), and with a tripartite agreement already in place, it was supposed to be officially passed on 7 March. However, at the last minute, the German government announced that it would not sign the bill unless the European Commission allowed the registration of new cars with engines running on CO2-neutral fuel (so-called eFuel) after 2035. Italy and Eastern European countries agree, and as of today there is no prospect of the bill being passed. It is a speciality of the Europeans to change the rules at the drop of a hat, but this time they seem to have decided to change the rules before they are made.

The German government has budgeted for a huge number of related projects to promote eFuel, including DeCarTrans (January 2023 – March 2026), which started in January 2023 and is the successor project to C3-Mobility (September 2018 – August 2021), which ended in 2021. It will produce around 380,000 litres of eFuel (eGasoline) by 2026, demonstrating that eFuel can be produced on an industrial scale.