With trepidation, I'll take a shot at the EU emission credit situation. This makes my head hurt.
The following analysis attempts to assess the implications of Stellantis dissolving the EU emissions pool with Tesla. This mainly looks at what Stellantis must do to avoid EU emissions penalties without Tesla.
We begin with the 2020 ICCT Market Monitor
https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/MarketMonitor-EU-jan2021.pdf
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Note that PSA-Opel and FCA, the components of Stellantis, are still bookkept separately. Also note that it looks like PSA-Opel was in pretty good shape last year. It actually came in under its emissions target.
However, it is important to understand the “Compliance Credits”. PI – or “Phase-In”, was a one-time-only 2020 gift that allowed manufacturers to write off their worst polluters, up to a credit of 3.0 g CO2/km. Everyone took full advantage, and that is now gone. Also SC – or “Super-credits” allowed manufacturers to double-count ZEVs in their emissions calculations up to 7.5 g CO2/km
total for 2020-2022. PSA-Opel used 5.3 out of the 7.5 in 2020, they only have 2.2 left through 2022. (EC – “Eco-Innovations” is a negligible component)
Looking at the FCA-Tesla-Honda pool, it used
all Phase-In and Super-credits compliance credits in 2020 and was still showing a 3 g/km gap.
To estimate the situation in 2021, I assumed that vehicle sales of PSA-Opel and the FCA-Tesla-Honda pool remained at 2020 totals along with the emission levels. Those are (also from the ICCT Market Monitor):
PSA-Opel: 1,723,970
FCA-Tesla-Honda: 859,451
(Honda sold less than 4000 cars in the EU in 2020, so its contribution can be ignored:
Register to read | Financial Times)
Given those assumptions, and the EU CO2 emissions penalty rate of 95€/vehicle/(g/km), the penalty situation in 2021 looks like this:
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If PSA-Opel and FCA-Tesla are considered separately, they could be predicted to incur €606 million and €1135 million penalties, respectively. If combined into one pool, the penalty could be somewhat less than the sum due to the way compliance credits are deducted. Still, €1455 million.
So, if Stellantis wanted to “go it alone”, what would it have to do to ditch Tesla and meet its emissions target? One option would be to replace the sales of the pool’s Teslas with Stellantis ZEVs, PLUS replace some Stellantis ICE cars with ZEVs. According to the Financial Times link, Tesla sold 97,957 vehicles in the EU in 2020. Given that (and ignoring Honda) the numbers work out like this for that scenario:
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Stellantis would have to sell 254,000 more ZEVs in 2021 than in 2020. 98,000 would replace the lost Teslas and 156,000 would need to replace Stellantis ICE vehicles.
Many assumptions would probably change (number of 2021 vehicle sales and ICE/ZEV mix) and other scenarios could be made to work (additional vs. replacement ZEVs, etc.). As usual, this doesn't shed much light on what Stellantis was paying Tesla other than establishing an upper bound.
