Green Car Advisor

CO2 penalties on premium vehicles would kill company, Porsche says.

Automakers are notorious for screaming "can't do!" whenever new emissions, safety and/or fuel economy regulations are imposed, and then – as economics overtake inertia – figuring out ways to do what they'd said was impossible.

Some day, of course, the tipping point will be reached and they will be asked, or told, to do what turns out to really be impossible.

If we knew when that would happen, we'd be out playing the futures market instead of sitting behind this computer keyboard.

But Porsche apparently believes it does know when, and says that when is now.

The German performance car maker's manager for energy and environment has said in an interview with Automotive News Europe that new carbon-dioxide reduction goals being proposed by the European Commission are impossible for his company to achieve if it is to remain Porsche.

"The model for CO₂ burden-sharing among individual companies being discussed leads to outcomes that Porsche could never meet or could only meet by abandoning its market identity," Porsche's Herbert Ampferer, told the paper.

The proposed CO₂ reductions would require Porsche to achieve a 40 percent cut in its fleetwide average, now 242 grams per kilometer (85 pounds per 100 miles) by the beginning of 2015, according to Energy Efficient MotorSports, a British-government backed program to encourage green initiatives in auto racing.

If the company's cars and SUVs exceed the limits, Porsche would be subject to fines of up to 95 euros ($149) for each gram over the limits.

Ampferer said that every Cayenne S sold in Europe after 2014 would carry a fine of 9,702 euros ($15,211) if the new rules are approved.

The unspoken threat is no more Cayenne S models, no Panamerica and perhaps nothing but a bunch of hybrid Porsches, or no Porsches at all.

It will be interesting, if the EU doesn't buckle under protests like that from some of Europe's top automakers (BMW and Mercedes-Benz also have complained, although not as dramatically), to see whether Porsche-as-we-know-it really does disappear, or whether all those German engineers will be able to work their magic one more time.

What happens with Porsche is also interesting because its campaign to win relief from the CO₂ rules is likely to be echoed, with gusto, by American automakers as pressure mounts in this country  for more restriction on carbon-dioxide emissions.

John O'Dell, Senior Editor