InfluenceMap's latest Transport Bulletin highlights recent insights into the advocacy of major companies and their industry associations on global transport policy. In this issue:
EU automakers push to weaken CO2 emissions reduction targets: In the second half of 2024 and the first half of 2025, InfluenceMap tracked a rise in negative advocacy to delay or weaken the EU's 2025 15% emissions reduction target for cars and vans.
US automakers endorse rollback of state zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) sales targets: Despite concerns on the legality of rolling back state's authority to enforce regulations, major industry associations joined by General Motors and Toyota rallied against California's transport regulations.
Toyota and Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association advocate for e-fuels and biofuels: After successfully advocating to weaken Japan's national ZEV sales target to include hybrid vehicles, automakers focus their advocacy on promoting low-carbon fuels.
In 2019, the EU adopted a 15% CO2 emissions reduction target for cars and vans for 2025. In the second half of 2024 and the first half of 2025, InfluenceMap tracked a rise in negative advocacy to delay or weaken the target. Many suggestions from industry now appear in the EU Commission’s Automotive Action Plan, released in March, which proposes new clauses that would weaken the policy’s ambition.
Auto industry lobbying on the target picked up in the second half of 2024 with Luca de Meo, departing Renault CEO and former European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) president, calling for a two-year delay to the 2025 target. ACEA is the main industry association for European automakers, representing BMW, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Renault, Volkswagen, Toyota, and Stellantis (as of January 2025).
In 2025, ACEA continued its campaign to weaken the target—coinciding with the launch of the EU’s Strategic Dialogue on the Future of the Automotive Industry in January 2025. The Dialogue aimed to bring stakeholders together to discuss measures to facilitate a “clean and competitive” transition for the automotive industry.
Ahead of this Dialogue, ACEA advocated for a “sober assessment” of adjustments for light and heavy-duty vehicles, while its chair, Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius, set an industry “wish list.” Following a second discussion of the Strategic Dialogue, industry reiterated calls to bring the review of the 15% CO2 emissions reduction target forward to 2025, to add measures to tackle enabling conditions, and to maintain technology openness. The industry’s advocacy appears to have influenced the Commission: in a press release on the meeting, President von der Leyen echoed industry’s terminology by describing technology neutrality as a “core principle.”
Industry’s lobbying from December 2024 to March 2025 can be broken into two key advocacy asks:
Call for non-compliance penalties to be waived: Renault, Mercedes-Benz, and ACEA advocated for flexibilities from penalties, though analysis suggests that automakers are unlikely to face any penalties in 2025. In contrast, several automakers—including Renault, Stellantis, and BMW—and the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) announced expected compliance, while Volvo Cars already exceeded the 15% CO2 target in 2024 due to its electric vehicle (EV) sales.
Push for an average compliance mechanism for 2025–29 and a phase-in loophole: In December 2024, ACEA pushed for “phasing-in or multi-year average compliance” to weaken the 2025 CO2 targets. It followed this with a February 2025 position paper advocating for EU policymakers to introduce multiple phase-in loopholes that would severely weaken the ambition of the 2025 target by excluding 10% of automakers' most polluting cars and vans, effectively reducing the emissions reduction target from 15% to just 7%.
The Dialogue culminated in the publication of the EU Automotive Action Plan in March 2025, which contains several proposals that mirror industry advocacy on the target. Despite acknowledging that the CO2 standards “provide long-term certainty and predictability for investors along the value chain, while allowing sufficient lead time for a fair transition,” the plan proposed weakening the 2025 CO2 targets. It proposed spreading the 15% 2025 CO2 reduction target over 2025–27, allowing manufacturers to compensate for exceeding the target through overachievements in other years. This follows ACEA’s calls for an average compliance mechanism, though the association sought a longer extension (2025–29) than the plan adopted. The change would result in an estimated 880,000 fewer EVs sold from 2025 to 2027 and reduce the regulatory incentive for automakers to release cheaper EV models in 2025.
On the same day as the Action Plan’s release, the EU Commission announced that it would bring the review of the legislation forward to the third or fourth quarter of 2025, in line with industry demands. An earlier review would use 2024 sales data instead of 2025, as originally planned—consequential because sales are anticipated to grow in 2025, driven by the 15% CO2 target.
ACEA described the flexibility as a “welcome first step,” and VDA went further by advocating to weaken the 2035 100% CO2 target by allowing the sale of plug-in hybrids. In contrast, Volvo Cars' CEO Jim Rowan opposed the proposal, stating that “This was not a government-only decision. This was ACEA and the government working together.”
Recently, automakers have advocated to further weaken the EU’s CO2 standards for light-duty vehicles.
In June 2025, VDA published a “10-point plan” proposing a reduction of the 100% 2035 target to 90%, phase-in mechanisms for the 2030 and 2035 targets, and a role for hybrids and renewable fuels beyond 2035.
A week after the concessions on the 2025 target, Volkswagen’s CEO, Oliver Blume advocated for “as big a flexibility as possible, far into the 2030s” in reference to the 2035 target.
European Association of Automotive Suppliers’ president, Matthias Zink, called for a role for plug-in hybrids beyond 2035.
ACEA chair and Mercedes-Benz CEO, Ola Källenius, appeared to advocate for an earlier review and flexibility for the 2035 target.
In contrast to the negative advocacy above, Volvo Cars has maintained its defense of the EU’s CO2 targets. In February 2025, the company’s CEO Jim Rowan urged policymakers not to reopen the legislation, describing the target as “crucial to align all stakeholders on this journey and ensure European competitiveness.”
On June 12, the US officially revoked California and other US states’ authority to enforce the Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II) and Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) rules. The rules were rolled back using the Congressional Review Act, despite concerns from the Senate Parliamentarian on the legality of this approach. The ACC II required 68% zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) sales by 2030 and 100% by 2035 for its 12 adopting states.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents many major auto companies—including BMW, Daimler, Ford, General Motors (GM), Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo Cars—supported the use of the Congressional Review Act to repeal the Advanced Clean Cars II rule in an April 2025 letter to the House of Representatives and a February 2025 letter to the House and US Senate. Its CEO John Bozzella also applauded the repeal, claiming that “these EV sales mandates were never achievable.”
In 2021, the Alliance urged policymakers to advance policies that would support the industry in achieving 40–50% EV sales by 2030—a goal that it reiterated as recently as 2023. By endorsing the rollback of ACC II—which the Alliance estimates covered approximately 30% of the US automotive market—the Alliance undermines its stated goal of securing policy that would advance this target.
General Motors requested that its employees personally advocate for Congress to repeal California’s authority to enforce the ACC II rule, according to a May 2025 Wall Street Journal article. After the decision, GM CEO Mary Barra stated that “what happened in Congress last week was necessary to protect the customer.” General Motors recently abandoned its ZEV targets with a decision to invest $888 million into the construction of large internal combustion engines instead of electric vehicles.
Toyota used a similar tactic, urging employees to “Write Your Legislators and Tell Them To Vote Yes on the CRA.”
Oil and gas industry associations, auto dealers, and cross-sector industry associations have recently reiterated opposition to ACC II. The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers Association, US Chamber of Commerce, National Federation of Independent Business, and National Automobile Dealers Association all endorsed the rollback of ACC II through the Congressional Review Act in May and June 2025. InfluenceMap finds that these “cross-sector” groups are some of the most negative entities in the LobbyMap system and tend to represent the positions of fossil fuel interests.
Ahead of the development of major policy packages in Japan, the automotive industry advocated to weaken government measures to decarbonize transport by classifying internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, including conventional and plug-in hybrids, as electric vehicles and promoting e-fuels and biofuels. Japanese automakers successfully secured this under Japan’s 2035 electric vehicle sales target. Also reflecting this stance, the 7th Strategic Energy Plan, finalized in February 2025, emphasized transport decarbonization through biofuels and e-fuels.
By contrast, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report finds that hybrid vehicles can cut emissions by 30%, depending on the fuel, but that they are only a temporary solution. With high confidence, it concludes that electric vehicles powered by low-emissions electricity offer the largest decarbonization potential for land-based transport on a life cycle basis. It also advises that “it is more efficient to use electricity directly and avoid the progressively larger conversion losses from producing hydrogen, ammonia, or constructed low GHG hydrocarbons.”
In October 2024, Toyota Motor’s chairman Akio Toyoda stressed his concern that vehicle electrification would lead to job losses, and in May 2025, the company stated that “approaching decarbonization from the fuel side, including e-fuels (synthetic fuels) and biofuels, will be a crucial point.”
Toyota’s vice president announced on March 31st that “No matter how advanced electric vehicles become, carbon neutral (virtually zero greenhouse gas emissions) fuel is absolutely necessary in terms of the vehicles we own as well.”
In a December 2024 Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) consultation on e-fuels, a representative from Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA) and Toyota advocated for the government to focus on achieving emissions reductions using combustion vehicles powered by biofuels and e-fuels and for a shift towards a “Well to Wheel” emissions assessment method that would support their continued use.
In a METI subcommittee meeting, JAMA requested that the government create a roadmap for reducing CO2 emissions through the use of biofuels.
While individual automakers and their industry associations actively advocate against vehicle electrification measures, InfluenceMap has identified more diverse positions from cross-sector industry associations in Japan:
The Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) has taken a mix of positive and negative positions on vehicle electrification—it generally supported a modal shift to lower-carbon transportation that includes subsidies for electric vehicles in addition to e-fuels in an April 2025 policy proposal, but also appeared to promote an extended global role for ICE-powered hybrids in a June 2024 policy proposal.
In a June 2025 position paper, Japan Climate Leaders’ Partnership (JCLP) advocated to introduce a ZEV mandate, carbon tax on petrol/diesel vehicles, and a ZEV roadmap and subsidies for infrastructure.
Responsible corporate engagement with climate policies remains a critical area of interest for investors. Storebrand Asset Management announced on July 8, 2025, that it had excluded Toyota from its investment portfolio in Q2 2025, citing the company’s strategic lobbying against climate change regulations and policies in multiple regions globally.
