When Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, painted Europe's green transition as a success story on October 22, the reality on the ground told a different story.

The continent's auto industry—once a pillar of European industrial strength—has sounded an unusually loud, unified alarm: The legally binding route to eliminate internal-combustion vehicles by 2035 is "no longer feasible" in today's geopolitical and economic context. That admission, put forward in a letter signed by the presidents of the European Automobile Manufacturer's Association (ACEA) and European Association of Automotive Suppliers (CLEPA), should be treated as a red flag rather than a bureaucratic briefing note.

Three separate, reinforcing failures explain why the 2035 timetable is now at risk: demand economics, infrastructure and grids and industrial supply chains. Each has recent data points that show the scale of the problem.

First, demand is real but shallow. The use of battery electric vehicles (BEVs), which are powered entirely by electricity, is growing but they remain a minority in Europe's new car market. In the first six months of 2025, BEVs accounted for roughly 15-16 percent of registrations across the EU—meaningful growth, but far short of the near-total replacement the 2035 ban implies.

Hybrid technologies still dominate consumers' choice set, and commercial vehicle electrification is much more limited: Vans and trucks show single-digit BEV shares, and commercial BEV penetration remains nascent outside a handful of early-adopter countries. In short, the needle is moving, but not remotely fast enough for an enforced phase-out of traditional vehicles.

Second, infrastructure and electricity systems are not ready. Europe recently passed the milestone of roughly 1 million public electric vehicle (EV) charging points—a headline figure applauded in Brussels—but behind that number lies a brutal shortfall in geographic coverage and raw capacity. Analyses by the ACEA and the International Energy Agency show that current rollout rates would leave the EU millions of chargers short of what is needed by 2030, and installations remain heavily concentrated in a few countries. 

Grid congestion, permitting bottlenecks and uneven deployment mean drivers in many member states still face long waits, thin networks and fragile local grids—a practical brake on consumer adoption.

Third, the industrial backbone is fraying. Europe's hope of building a local battery industry suffered a symbolic blow when Northvolt—a Sweden-based manufacturer of lithium-ion batteries for EVs and operator of the championed European gigafactory—announced in March it had filed for bankruptcy and halted operations. That collapse deflated confidence that Europe could scale battery production quickly or cheaply enough to break dependence on Asian suppliers.

At the same time, automotive balance sheets are weakening: Mercedes, Audi, BMW, Volkswagen and Stellantis have reported sharp falls in operating profits—in Stellantis' case, a 2.3-billion-euro ($2.65 billion) first-half loss in 2025. Those are not idiosyncratic setbacks; they are structural hits driven by weak demand, rising production costs and disruptive trade and regulatory pressures.

Policy choices have amplified these stresses. Washington's decision to impose higher tariffs on European auto imports earlier this year and subsequent trade skirmishes have added direct costs and strategic uncertainty for exporters and global supply chains. Stellantis attributed hundreds of millions in charges to tariff impacts.

Meanwhile, the EU's laboratory of regulatory zeal—tight carbon dioxide targets, rising compliance costs and ambitious timelines—is colliding with market realities. In other words, Europe is trying to force a capital-intensive industrial transformation at breakneck speed while relying on supply chains and consumers that are not yet aligned with the plan.

Brussels' answer so far has been more of the same: insistence, planning documents and calls for smoother permitting. However, the industry no longer asks for cheerleading. It wants cash, coordinated industrial policy and realistic timelines.

The ACEA and CLEPA letter explicitly asks for "clear and orderly" rules, easier permits and public support to avoid social and industrial dislocation—language that translates, in practice, to subsidies, tax incentives and state-backed energy deals. That request exposes the political fragility behind the rhetoric. Unless the public purse or regulatory burden is retooled, taxpayers and consumers will pay for the transition, not market forces.

There are geopolitical consequences, too. While Brussels insists it delivers on climate promises, China continues to expand its leadership

in EV supply chains and downstream manufacturing, and the U.S. is dangling subsidies, market access and tariff leverage. The result: Europe risks exporting strategic industrial capacity even as it imports the environmental benefits and the political capital of being "green." If the continent keeps outsourcing batteries and critical components while maintaining the 2035 deadline, it will have decarbonized more in name than substance—and probably at a higher economic cost.

What would a pragmatic reset look like? First, align mandatory carbon dioxide trajectories with realistic vehicle and infrastructure buildout curves; second, massively accelerate and harmonize charging and grid investments with simpler permitting and EU-level financing; third, deploy a targeted industrial package for batteries and cell manufacturing that reduces dependence on a single region; and fourth, use temporary demand-side supports to avoid a cliff in sales that would hollow out the industry.

These are politically complex steps—but preferable to the alternative: a decade of plant closures, job losses and reputational damage that hollow out Europe's ability to shape the global low-emissions transition.

Von der Leyen's speeches can celebrate intent but industry data and recent bankruptcies reveal execution risk. The EU can still be a climate leader, but only if it stops treating the green transition as a symbolic target and starts treating it as a manufacturing crisis that needs an industrial strategy, not just regulation. Otherwise, the 2035 mandate risks becoming a monument to good intentions and poor planning—costly to voters and lethal for Europe's industrial heartland. BR

The author is former prime minister of Kyrgyzstan, a distinguished professor of the Belt and Road School at Beijing Normal University and author of the book Central Asia's Economic Rebirth in the Shadow of the New Great Game 

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson 

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