► What we learnt at the FT Future of Car summit
► How rules killed the small petrol hatch
► At least we have the Renault 5
The recent FT Future of the Car summit gave me confidence in the future of the car. One of the main lessons was that European cars need to be more European, and hooray to that.
In eloquent addresses, the bosses of Europe’s two biggest non-German cars makers, Luca de Meo (now former Renault CEO) and John Elkann (Stellantis) said Europe needs to make more inexpensive small cars. ‘Our roots are in small cars,’ noted Elkann, great-great grandson of Fiat founder Giovanni Agnelli. ‘They were really the driving force of our prosperity.’ Small cars can reboot the European market, added de Meo.
In the last 20 years Europe has lost the small-car knack, and European car makers, European consumers, European cities and the European environment – and I include Britain – have suffered.
Desperate to succeed in prospering China and in more prosperous America, many European makers produce cars better suited to new Chinese cities than to old European ones; to US interstates and boulevards not European back roads; to expansive America not congested Europe. They have prioritised global consumers, not European ones.
As de Mero said: ‘The medieval streets in Salamanca, Siena and Heidelberg haven’t changed dimensions in 20 years. And [there’s no space] to make the garage bigger.’ He also pointed out that the proportion of cars under four metres built by European makers has shrunk from 50 per cent in the 1980s to five per cent now.
And as our car makers turned their backs on us, so we turned our backs on them, embracing small Japanese, Korean and (now) Chinese cars instead. All European small petrol hatches have gone. No more Ups, 108s, C1s, Kas, Adams or Twingos, and no petrol 500s in the UK.
A similar sorry story is happening in the one-size-up B-segment class, as witnessed by the death of the Fiesta, until recently Britain’s best-selling car. Instead, Ford prefers to build a big electric Explorer SUV: eco posturing not eco progress.
Now, China and America are turning their backs on Europe. Chinese consumers increasingly buy their own brands. Trump tariffs will likely force America to do the same. Europe’s car makers will need to rely more on Europe.
Europe’s meddlesome legislators have made a bad situation worse. Silly rules, supposedly to help the environment, effectively killed off the small petrol hatch, probably the world’s most energy efficient car from cradle-to-grave, and the lowest lifetime carbon emitter.
Tough emissions tests made it expensive to engineer petrol (or diesel) cars. The profit margin on small cars is thin, and the scope for price rises limited. So, car makers killed them and concentrated on building bigger and more profitable models while simultaneously engineering expensive new electric cars, mostly big. As Stellantis’ then-boss Carlos Tavares told me a year ago, the legislation to improve the environment, absurdly, favours big cars.
The legislation is half-baked, as with most automotive rule-making over the decades. It confuses tailpipe emissions with lifecycle impact. Thomas Ingenlath, ex-boss of Polestar, lobbied for transparency on total vehicle carbon emissions. Sadly, this has so far fallen on deaf hours.
Instead of legislation to punish small cars, we need rules to encourage them.
One way to promote smallness is to punish bulk, by taxing weight. It is to push primary safety (avoiding an accident) rather than, as now, prioritising secondary safety (surviving an accident). It is to focus on pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists and small car drivers rather than, as now, rules that favour bulky cars that cushion their occupants in a crash but are more likely to kill everyone else.
It is to encourage lower emissions, not fixate on impractical zero emissions.
Perhaps most important of all, Europe needs to make desirable small cars again. Cars that look great and are ideal for our narrow city streets and small country roads; that have the latest tech and are fun to drive. Small cars that are affordable, profitable and, with a view to the future, increasingly electric.
In other words, cars like the new Renault 5.