Renault and Stellantis bosses team up to 'fight for future of small cars'

According to de Meo, over the course of 124,000 miles (a reasonable life cycle for a modern car), the average ICE car in Europe produces 60,000kg of CO2, compared with 20 tonnes for an EV - “a third as much, but still not zero”.

Meanwhile, a range-extender or plug-in hybrid alternative – which would be priced somewhere between the two – would emit 30,000kg of CO2 over the same mileage. Simply put, it would halve the CO2 output of an ICE car while commanding less of a price premium than an EV alternative.

He said these statistics should be factored into the legislation, which should be less focused on the CO2 that comes out of a car’s exhaust and more on the impact of its production and entire use cycle - and in the context of the wider car parc rather than on an individual basis.

"We are advocating for changing the ‘tailpipe approach’ to a CO2 life cycle one," said de Meo.

There would be a quicker and more obvious reduction in overall CO2 output in Europe, according to de Meo, if owners of Euro 2 and Euro 3 combustion cars swapped to a cleaner Euro 6 alternative - and then later on into an EV, rather than going straight from an old petrol or diesel supermini into a far more expensive electric equivalent.

Achieving this shift in mindset and regulation, said de Meo, means the industry and politicians must be “very, very pragmatic”.

“We need to talk about strategy," he said. "We need to put our engineers on the right tracks that can create a competitive advantage for the European industry."

Reducing the CO2 output of cars in Europe, he argued, should not mean they all swap to a battery-electric powertrain.

"The principle of technological neutrality has underpinned every regulation in every sector in Europe since it was founded. This has not been the case with cars. We are the only industry which is forced to reduce by 100% the impact [of its products],” said de Meo.

Elkann concurred: “We believe that the incredible opportunity for European countries and the European Union to address the emissions is not focusing on zero-emission for new cars, but how we can take down the emissions of the 250 million cars that today are circulating within the European Union.

“And we truly believe that that opportunity is not only good for the overall environment: it's good for people who want to buy cars. These cars are too expensive, fundamentally driven by regulations that have made them expensive.”

De Meo said that in 2030, a medium-sized Renault car will have increased in cost by 20% compared with 2015. “In the case of small cars,” he said, “it’s 40%.”

That drastic increase in price is just one reason why the average age of a car in Europe now stands at 10 years, said Elkann, adding that the figure is as high as 17 years in Greece - showing that buyers are increasingly unwilling to swallow the cost of upgrading to a new car.

De Meo also suggested that promoting the sale of larger cars has obvious negative implications for Europe’s older urban environments, because while vehicles have generally grown in size over the decades, the roads on which they drive have not.

He said: “In the 1980s, 50% of the market was below four-metre. It's 5% right now. This is a fact. But do you think that the medieval streets in Salamanca, Sienna or Heidelberg have changed dimension?”

He added: "You're not going to make garages bigger.”

That was echoed by Elkann, who said that today’s cars “are over-pumped, as if they had gone to the gym for weeks or years”.

To counter these increases in size and cost, car makers must be given the freedom to continue producing small, cheap cars without risking heavy fines or a dramatic drop in sales that’s tied to any drops in EV demand - or a lack of appetite for small, expensive electric cars.

Elkann said: "What we want is very simple. It is really what the European Union stated it wants to achieve: the simplification of the regulations.

“If we have less regulation, we can make sure that we build cars that are less expensive and so they'll be more affordable.

"We want certainty, speed and to make sure that the rules that are going to be put in place – through regulations and through tariffs – are such that we can do what we love doing, which is building great cars for people that love the cars we do.”