Urgent action needed on post-Brexit trade rules for EVs, lobby group ACEA says

The European Union and Britain need to take urgent action to postpone rules for electric vehicles traded between the bloc and the U.K. that will trigger 10 percent tariffs, Europe's car industry group ACEA said.

"Driving up consumer prices of European electric vehicles, at the very time when we need to fight for market share in the face of fierce international competition, is not the right move," ACEA President and Renault CEO Luca de Meo said on Monday ahead of a planned trade meeting between EU and UK officials this week.

Under the EU-U.K. post-Brexit trade deal, EVs need to have 45 percent EU or U.K. content from 2024, with a 50 percent-60 percent requirement for their battery cells and packs, or face British or EU import tariffs of 10 percent.

The problem is that automakers in Britain and the EU have not built up their EV supply chains sufficiently to meet those requirements and have called for the rules to be postponed until 2027.

Stellantis has said its British Vauxhall plants could close with the loss of thousands of jobs unless the Brexit deal is swiftly renegotiated, while Ford has said it will slow the transition to electric.

ACEA has said the rules could cost carmakers up to 4.3 billion euros ($4.57 billion) in tariffs and hit output.

So far, the EU executive has been reluctant to renegotiate the deal.

In June, Stefan Fuehring, a European Commission official overseeing the post-Brexit EU-U.K. trade agreement, said the EU rules of origin were "fit for purpose" and that the bloc was not considering changing them.