BMW has 2 billion euro green lead over Daimler

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Autonews reports that BMW has 2 billion lead over Daimler considering their average fleet CO2 emissions. The source of this report is Morgan Stanley auto analyst Stuart Pearson. Pearson says that this lead means a lot to the BMW brand. BMW’s CO2 emissions lead over Daimler would result in improved pricing power as its main rival races to add technology to close the gap.

In 2010, BMW Group (BMW, Mini and Roll-Royce) finished with an average CO2 emissions of 147.9 grams per kilometer. In comparison, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz, Smart and Maybach) ended last year with 163.3 g/km.

The results are based on an analysis of 21 European markets.

In 2015, EU will issue new mandatory targets for automakers. To avoid hefty penalties, BMW will have to reduce its fleet CO2 emissions by 7.1 percent to 138.1 g/km while Daimer has an even bigger challenge: 19.8 percent to 136.4 g/km.

A spokesperson for the company says BMW has invested about 1.2 billion euros in the development and launch of CO2-reducing technologies such as stop-start and brake-energy regeneration.

But BMW is onto bigger plans. Same spokesperson states that the premium carmaker aims to reduce its CO2 fleet emissions by at least 25 percent before 2020.

Gareth Hession, JATO’s vice president of research, said the smart brand is the one responsible for the gap.

“I think they were expecting better things from their Smart brand to try to underpin their [CO2] results, but Smart isn’t delivering,” he said. “There is a real ceiling on Smart’s volume because it is a pretty expensive vehicle to produce.”

In contrast, the MINI brand added CO2 friendly vehicles, like the Clubman and Countryman, both of which have CO2 emissions ranging from 103g/km to 168g/km.

Daimler hopes to quickly close the gap with a new range of direct-injection gasoline engines and stop-start systems.