Sadly this isn't true. Not to mention the particulates which VW defrauded everyone about.
VW need to stop their engine division running the company and get with the affordable EV programme.
CO2 emissions from fossil fuels is 38 billion tones in 2023 (https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions)
Oceania: ~0.5 billion tones
Aviation: ~1 billion tones
Africa: ~1.5 billion tones
Europe: ~5 billion tones
America: ~7.2 billion tones
Asia: ~22.5 billion tones
This includes the fossil fuels from the whole industry and not only the civil transportation. Europe constitutes ~13% of total (world) emissions.
How much does the fossile fuel car industry contribute to these numbers? I couldn't find that information.
Let's try to deduce this number.
According to https://www.acea.auto/files/ACEA-report-vehicles-in-use-euro... in 2023 there had been ~294M passenger cars registered (on the road) in EU+EFTA+UK (page nr 4).
Roughly around 93% of those ~294M passenger cars are either petrol or diesel, so ~274M (page nr 14).
According to https://www.acea.auto/figure/average-co2-emissions-from-new-... the average CO2/km consumption for new cars is 110g.
Let's correct this figure so that it also includes the older cars so let's assume that the CO2/km consumption is 130g.
Let the average passenger car distance travel be 15k km a year.
274M cars * 15k km * 130g = 5.343×10¹⁴g = 0.5343 billion tonnes.
So, only 10% of total CO2 emissions from Europe and 0.01% of total CO2 emissions in the world?
> Not that EV are a bad idea
From an engineering point of view, if we were to solve the pollution problem, and if the numbers above are not terribly wrong, then the EVs are not an answer. There is a huge (operating) cost attached to rebuilding the whole industry with apparently a very small impact. And I'd say with a reasonably large negative impact since we see many automotive manufacturers folding under the EV pressure.
> because people don't have often a viable setup to switch to EV
I agree and I would also add that not that many people can afford buying a new car for ~40k EUR. For many people this is inaccessible.
> according to a report from the European Environment Agency
and I don't know how they got to their numbers. Don't have time to read it right now but do you see a mistake in my calculations? I think I used valid sources?
See eg https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/623b0fb28fa8f... p.5 for a graph.
(Depending on context we might include the car roads construction and maintenance as well, for example when considering the merits of different transportation modes)