Subs exclusive: ACEA lobby group under pressure as Volvo leaves

The news that Volvo will join Stellantis in leaving the European car makers’ lobby association ACEA begs the question: can the 30-year-old lobby group survive? And if so, who can present the unified voice needed to present the industry’s case to the European Union? Volvo’s official reason for leaving was that its “sustainability strategy and ambitions aren't fully aligned with ACEA’s positioning”. Privately, the company says it’s cross with the lobby group’s efforts to water down the EU’s recent decision to reduce CO2 emissions emanating from new cars to zero by 2025. Volvo is committed to going all electric by 2030, so paying to be a member of an organisation that thinks zero emission by 2035 is a stretch doesn’t make a lot of sense. The optics for ACEA are at least as bad as Stellantis leaving, given that Volvo was one of the group’s founding car makers back in 1991. The Geely-owned Swedish brand is keen to point out that its timing is unrelated to Stellantis’s announcement in June. However, the fact that two members have announced they're leaving the 16-member organisation within the space of a month is a bad look. Interestingly, Stellantis likely decided to leave ACEA for the opposite reason to Volvo: because the lobby group wasn’t pushing hard enough to water down the emissions. The announcement from the 14-brand giant was coupled with news that it will set up a Freedom of Mobility Forum to discuss the “key questions” arising from the EU’s increasingly short timetable for decarbonisation. When one of your members is leaving because you’re pushing too hard in one direction and another likely believes you’re not pushing hard enough while your goal is to find a common voice, you have a major problem. Both Stellantis and Volvo will be thankful for the savings on membership fees, thought to be in the region of between €500,000 to €1 million per year. However, neither will give up on the lobbying, and a united voice targeted at the right law makers has proven to have an effect. So who will car makers turn to in their bid to nudge law makers in their preferred direction? The answer for current or imminent electric-only car makers is increasingly AVERE, aka the European Association for Electromobility. Based in the Belgian capital Brussels (like all EU lobby groups), it's winning around brands that like that it “represents the entire width of the e-mobility ecosystem”, according to its declared purpose. The company recently added Chinese EV maker Nio to its roster of 45 members, which includes other EV start-ups including Lucid, Rivian, Xpeng and the daddy of them all, Tesla. But it also represents charger companies such as Fastned, Ionity and Wallbox, as well as country-specific EV associations. So far, no ACEA member has made the jump, but watch this space come the autumn. The appeal is the lack of prevarication. AVERE is single-minded in its goal to advance the cause of electric motion and is pushing for the 2035 zero-emissions target for cars and vans to be brought forward to 2030 (closer to the UK’s target, although we don’t know what type of hybrids will be allowed to exist up to 2035). Car companies may decide to stick with ACEA but also hedge their bets with membership of AVERE as well, according to gossip heard by Matthias Schmidt, author of the European Electric Car Study. ACEA might not be able to speak with one voice on the shift to electric and zero emissions, but it can point to unity on other elements of automotive legislation. The trouble is they pale beside the EV transition. Incoming ACEA secretary general Sigrid de Vries can’t ignore the boulder-sized issue dominating her in-tray: prevent electrification breaking up the organisation for good.