E-mobility: Stellantis and Toyota no longer need Tesla for fleet targets

Toyota and Stellantis have withdrawn from the CO₂ emissions pool with Tesla for 2026. This means Tesla is losing its two largest net payers in emissions trading. Ford, Honda, Mazda, and Suzuki remain connected to Tesla; they are unlikely to meet their emissions targets.

Due to EU rules for CO₂ fleet targets, emissions trading is a viable path. It allows manufacturers who would exceed their fleet limits to cooperate with car producers who are below their individual target values. When both reconcile their figures (for a fee), the CO₂ offenders can reduce their results and avoid the penalties that would otherwise be due for exceeding limits. Tesla, with its exclusively battery-electric lineup and previously high sales figures, thus became a safe haven for Toyota, Stellantis, Ford, Honda, Mazda, Subaru, and Suzuki. Emissions trading is estimated by analysts at the UBS banking group to have brought Tesla over a billion euros in 2025 alone.

More e-cars in the lineup

The Stellantis group can likely compensate for its projected limit deficit of around six percent with the help of the electric car startup Leapmotor from China, with whom it works closely and holds a 51 percent stake. Toyota was too slow with its strategy of continuing to focus on combustion engines within hybrid drives to lower its fleet limit. Only now has the Japanese group, also with the help of battery-electric Suzuki models that it sells under its own label, managed to reduce its figures sustainably. Its own electric cars, the Urban Cruiser and C-HR+, are also intended to contribute to this.

Toyota is expected to achieve its 2025 target of 96.3 grams of CO₂ per kilometer almost exactly. Should the compensations not be achievable with internal resources as hoped, Toyota and Stellantis have a backdoor: They can theoretically return to Tesla until December 1, 2026.

(fpi)