"The EU's car lie" — Germany's Bild tabloid newspaper didn't mince words when it reported on what it called the European Union's "dangerous" claim that electric vehicles were carbon neutral. Markus Söder, the conservative state premier of Bavaria — home to major automotive brands like Audi, BMWand Mercedes-Benz — was equally direct. Writing on social media, he called for an end to "the EU's phaseout of internal combustion engines" set for 2035.
Such a policy shift, he said, was now backed by "science." Söder and Bild were reacting to a new report by the Technical University of Munich (TUM), which outlined what it considered to be a major flaw in the EU's climate strategy: the fact that its vehicle emissions regulation only focuses on CO2 emissions from exhaust gases and that battery-electric vehicles are considered "climate-neutral." To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The report stated that battery-electric vehicles reduce carbon emissions by only "41% on average" over combustion engine vehicles, with the EU regulation failing to take into account emissions generated by other factors like manufacturing and electricity mix. Gas-powered vehicles were at a disadvantage, the report concluded, suggesting emissions should be counted over a vehicle's entire life cycle, from the materials used to build a car to the fuel that makes it run. Credit could be given for the use of green steel, for instance, or recovering raw materials through recycling.
It highlighted several major car manufacturers that support this approach, including BMW, Audi and Volkswagen — all major institutional donors at TUM. Georg Bieker, who researches the environmental impact of electric and gas-powered cars at the US-based International Council on Clean Transportation think tank, said TUM's analysis didn't offer any new insights. He, and other climate and mobility experts, pointed out that the importance of life-cycle assessments was already well known.
Bieker co-authored a 2025 study examining the global warming potential of passenger cars sold in the EU which took into account their entire life cycle, from the production of the vehicle to its fuel consumption and maintenance. It found that the emissions generated by battery-electric vehicles are on average 73% lower than gasoline cars, and up to 78% when using only renewable electricity. Similar studies, including from the EU and the International Energy Agency, came up with emissions reductions of between 60%-66%.
The Germany Environment Ministry said modern vehicles could even achieve reductions of up to 80%. Hybrid vehicles, meanwhile, which combine a combustion engine with an electric motor and battery charged by the car's brakes and an internal generator, generate fewer emissions than traditional cars, but still don't match fully electric vehicles. Bieker said the full EV advantage will only grow as production and operation becomes less carbon intensive.
Even today, he added, production emissions for gasoline internal combustion vehicles only account for around 13% of the total climate impact; most of the emissions come from the tailpipe. Bieker confirmed batteries were still one of the main environmental challenges facing electric cars. The mining of key resources like cobalt and lithium has been linked to habitat destruction and water depletion; mining 1 ton of lithium, enough for around 125 EVs, requires some 2 million liters of water.
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