According to the European Environment Agency, this is by far the biggest one-year drop since 2010, when Europe started applying CO2 standards. Since the beginning of the year under review, stricter emission standards (on average 95 g CO2/km for normal cars, 147 g CO2 for delivery vans) have been in force, forcing manufacturers to produce cleaner engines.
But the biggest gain comes from the tripling of the number of plug-in cars sold (fully electric and hybrid), from 3.5 percent in 2019 to 11.6 percent in 2020. Despite falling car sales in that year due to corona, the dealers for the first time hit one million copies sold.
According to the Environment Agency, the increasingly strict emission standards also remain an important CO2 limiter. Most car manufacturers respect these standards, producers that have not met them will have to cough up a combined amount of more than 500 million by 2020.
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