You all now the story of the car dealer who sells a brand-new car to a customer who just popped in for a set of hubcaps. Now, this piece of pop culture does not do justice to our car dealers in Switzerland. They are utterly unable to convince their customers to buy fuel efficient cars, even less electric cars. Swiss customers are stubborn. They know exactly what they want when they enter the dealership and they insist on buying expensive oversized limousines with blown up engines and all possible options (the famous 'Swiss edition'). No argumentation of the seller can budge them. That is the only reason why the average fuel efficiency of newly matriculated cars does not decrease, remaining far from the 95 gCO2/km written in the existing CO2 law as the maximum for the end of 2020 (article 10). Even the widening gap between the theoretical emissions used for computing this average and the emissions of real cars (with all those options, including extra-wide tires) under plausible driving conditions does not bring theoretical emissions down. Of course, it does not help them that the car makers keep advertising for large and powerful cars and that the fuel efficiency label grants the maximum A-Grade to oversized cars such as the Land Rover Evoque with its 1.9 tons of empty weight and 113 gCO2/km. For the sake of meeting the CO2 emissions targets set in the law (not even to speak of what is required to slow down global warming), I recommend that the car importers' and sellers' associations train their members in becoming more effective car dealers. That might cost them less than lobbying the Parliament and Administration against stricter fuel efficiency standards.
