“Goodbye to cars with internal combustion engines by 2035”

The farewell to internal combustion engines starting from 2035, announced by Cite, the Interministerial Committee for Ecological Transition, which involves the ministries of Ecological Transition, Sustainable Infrastructure and Mobility and Economic Development could have significant impacts on a sector – that of car production – which in Italy, especially after World War II, was a driving force for the entire national economy, but which in the last 20 years has experienced ups and downs, culminating in the profound crisis caused by the pandemic. Read also The numbers of Anfia, the association of the Italian automotive supply chain, tell of a national production that grew from 2014 to 2017, going from 698 thousand units to 1.14 million, a phase followed by a decrease in 2018 of 7% to 1.06 million cars and again in 2019 by 14% to 915 thousand. Then, in 2020 Covid led to a collapse of 15.1% compared to 2019, for a total of 777 thousand volumes, 67% destined for foreign markets. In particular, in 2020 the domestic production of cars amounted to 452 thousand units, 16.6% less than in 2019. The gradual farewell to diesel fuel also weighs in with a number of diesel cars produced in Italy that from 2016 to 2020 is decreased by 18 percentage points, going from 33% to 15% of the total domestic production, equal to a decrease in volumes of 70.8% in the five-year period. During the period, the volume production of petrol cars also decreased by 33.8%, while there was a real drop in the production of methane cars (-77%), which fell below the 1% share. The volumes of LPG cars are also down, -52%, the share of which settles at around 2%. Electric and hybrid vehicles, which were not produced in 2016, instead reached a share of respectively 3 and 14% of the total number of cars. On the commercial vehicle front, on the other hand, 325,000 commercial vehicles and trucks left the Italian plants in 2020. and buses, with a decrease of 13% compared to 2019, a production – explains Anfia – “decisive for employment and exports”. In particular, domestic bus production is almost zero: from an average annual production from 2000 to 2008 of almost 2,600 buses (it was over 5,700 in the previous decade), it has gone to just over 600 buses in the last three years 2018-2020. , “thanks to the post-2008 economic-financial crisis and the lack of state planning in determining the quality and quantity of Local Public Transport services”.