LEVA-EU statement at the stakeholder roundtable on CO₂ in cars organised by MEP Michael Bloss

LEVA-EU supports the direction of this proposal — the small electric vehicle category and the super-credits for affordable, EU-made small cars. But as drafted, it has a major gap, and we’re asking you to close it.

The proposal grants the “small electric vehicle” label, and the super-credits, only to vehicles in category M1. Yet the smallest, lightest, most resource-efficient electric vehicles already on our roads — and already built in Europe — are the L-categories L6e-B and L7e-C. The proposal leaves them out.

We simply ask that the two L-categories be included, on equal footing with M1, in the small car initiative and the super-credits system. The MEPs already have our concrete amendments, so let us focus on why it matters.

1. Resources and resilience

These vehicles save resources across the board. They use thirty to eighty per cent less energy than a conventional electric car. That means less electricity drawn from the grid, far smaller batteries, far fewer critical raw materials, and a lot less oil. And this could not matter more right now. Europe must become more self-sufficient, more resilient — less exposed to volatile oil markets, less dependent on imported raw materials. These are exactly the vehicles that deliver that. Replace a car trip with one of them, and the research shows you cut emissions by more than forty per cent — using a fraction of the energy, a fraction of the materials. So if we want strategic autonomy and decarbonisation at the same time, lightweight is not a niche. It is the answer.

2. Affordability and inclusion

This proposal’s stated purpose is to make electric mobility affordable. But many people simply cannot afford a large electric car — and many don’t even need one. The L-category vehicle is the most affordable clean vehicle Europe produces. If we exclude exactly this segment from the incentives, we hold it back from reaching the scale that drives prices down — the scale at which clean mobility becomes accessible to lower-income households, to younger and older drivers, to people in smaller towns and rural areas. Including the L-categories is therefore not only an industrial or climate measure; it is what makes the transition inclusive, rather than a transition only for those who can already afford it.

3. European industry

We already have a micro-LEV manufacturing base in Europe — largely SMEs — producing these vehicles on European soil, today, at real volumes. If the L-categories are excluded, the effect is severe. They are shut out of the very incentives their M1 competitors receive, while facing intense competition from outside Europe. Excluding them does not protect European industry — it undermines it, and risks pushing this genuinely European segment to move production out of Europe altogether. That is the opposite of what this package is meant to achieve.

A simple change, an existing solution

Our proposal is a simple change of wording to include two vehicle categories that already exist in EU law. No new technical requirements, no new compliance costs. It simply lets the policy recognise the most efficient — and most affordable — small electric vehicles Europe already builds.