The Automotive Package presented by the European Commission in mid-December marks a structural shift in how the EU intends to balance climate targets, industrial competitiveness, and technological neutrality in the automotive sector. For electric motor and e‑powertrain engineers, the new framework directly impacts the trajectory of electrification, the volume and profile of future EV platforms, and the role of hybrid and combustion-based architectures beyond 2035.
The Automotive Package is the political and regulatory output of the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of the European Automotive Industry, a high-level process launched by President Ursula von der Leyen to address competitiveness, supply chains, and the clean transition. The Dialogue has brought OEMs, suppliers, ACEA, consumer organisations such as BEUC, and workers’ representatives (ETF and others) into a structured discussion around batteries, regulatory burden, corporate fleets and CO₂ standards.
The Automotive Package does not negate the centrality of electric propulsion in Europe’s long-term transport decarbonisation strategy; instead, it reshapes the speed and modalities of that transition. More space is opened for hybridization, range extenders and alternative fuels, but the main regulatory and financial signals — from the Battery Booster to green corporate fleets and the small EV category — continue to favour growth in electric motor applications across passenger cars and light commercial vehicles.
For the electric motor value chain, this context is critical: the package is explicitly framed as a competitiveness tool, aiming to keep manufacturing and innovation in Europe while preserving a clear signal toward clean mobility. This combination of climate and industrial goals explains the mix of targeted financial support and regulatory flexibility embedded in the measures.
Battery Booster and EV industrial base
At the core of the package is the Battery Booster Strategy, which allocates €1.8 billion to accelerate a fully EU‑based battery value chain, with €1.5 billion available as zero‑interest loans for European cell manufacturers. This capital injection is designed to de‑risk investments in cell plants and upstream materials, reducing dependence on extra‑EU suppliers and stabilising long-term sourcing for traction batteries.
For motor and inverter manufacturers, a more resilient European battery ecosystem has two technical implications:
– More predictable pack specifications and supply continuity, enabling tighter optimisation of e‑powertrains around known voltage, current, and thermal envelopes.
- Greater scope for integrated design of battery–inverter–motor systems, including higher utilization of regenerative braking and bidirectional power flows within a European standardisation framework.
By explicitly targeting “made in EU” batteries, the strategy reinforces the positioning of European e‑drives against competitors that combine low-cost cells with vertically integrated motor production.
Greening corporate fleets and demand signals
The proposed Regulation on Green Corporate Fleets obliges Member States to ensure that, from 2030, a defined share of new corporate car and van registrations by large companies is zero‑ or low‑emission, with a separate target for zero‑emission vehicles. National quotas will depend on market maturity and local conditions, but the mechanism is designed to drive fleet turnover and scale up EV penetration in high‑mileage, professionally managed fleets.
For the electric motor engineering community, this means higher demand for robust, high‑duty-cycle e‑powertrains for company cars, light commercial vehicles, and service fleets, where reliability and total cost of ownership dominate over emotional performance. It measn also a likely acceleration in the deployment of modular e‑axles and integrated motor–inverter units optimised for fleet duty cycles and simplified maintenance.
Automotive Omnibus, small EVs and testing simplification
The Automotive Omnibus proposal aims to reduce administrative and testing burdens by consolidating and simplifying sector-specific rules, while simultaneously opening a new segment for compact electric vehicles. It introduces a new subcategory of small affordable cars, corresponding to compact electric vehicles (often referenced as an M1E‑type concept), with a maximum length of around 4.2 meters and stable technical requirements for ten years.
Key technical implications include:
– A predictable regulatory envelope for small EV platforms, allowing OEMs and Tier‑1s to amortise the development of compact e‑drives, motors and gearboxes across a decade without frequent homologation changes.
– Specific exemptions and facilitated treatment for electric vans, combined with partial simplification of Euro 7 testing, which can free engineering capacity and budgets for further electrification and e‑drive efficiency improvements.
-For suppliers of small traction motors, integrated drive units and cost‑sensitive inverters, this subcategory is an opportunity to standardise architectures and scale production volumes in the A/B‑segment EV market.
