A correspondence analysis has been carried out to analyze the political positions of the 10 car manufacturers.
The objective of the analysis has been to define the political positions of manufacturers and to ‘map’ their political positions in relation to each other to determine whether manufacturers are homogeneous in their political position. The data for the correspondence analysis is based on responses of the Commission’s survey.
The Commission’s survey was based on categorical variables, hence suitable for multiple correspondence analysis. Of the 205 received responses, this thesis has singled out 67 respondents subject for the correspondence analysis. Following types of respondents have been excluded from the dataset 1) Private individuals (82), 2) Respondents not registered in the EU’s transparency register, eliminating the opportunity for analyzing their network relations (43), and 3) Respondents having left four or more questions unanswered (13). The reason for conducting an analysis on a dataset including more than the 10 car manufacturers is to provide the means to explore whether the car manufacturing firms’ responses are distinguished from the rest of the sample. Basing the correspondence analysis on 67 respondents instead of 10, will provide a larger basis of comparison. A full list of the 67 respondents can be found in appendix 3.2. The correspondence analysis has been performed on both (1) all 67 survey respondents and (2) a subset of the 10 car manufacturers presented in Table 2.
Of the 54 questions in the Commission’s survey, the correspondence analysis uses a sub-set of 10 questions.
Questions being qualitative in nature, e.g. comment sections, have been removed from the dataset. The 10 questions have been chosen based on four key areas of the legislation, which have been highlighted by The European Commission as the main elements in the legislation (Commission, 2019). These four elements include:
1. The emission reduction target rate 2. Market surveillance measures 3. SME and small-scale producers
4. Incentives for low- and zero-emission vehicles
The first element relates to the CO2 reduction target level, which is the rate of reduction of CO2 that manufacturers must comply with in the future. The second element relates to incentive mechanisms for zero- and low-emission vehicles (ZLEVs), including issues related to whether the legislation should provide
incentives to produce more ZLEVs and if it will influence manufacturers. The third element relates to whether the legislation should continue to have exemptions and derogations for certain manufacturers. There is distinction between small and medium sized enterprises (SME), which is defined to produce 10,000-300,000 cars each year and niche manufacturers, which produce less than 1000 cars per year and whether those producers should have derogations. The fourth element relates to governance mechanisms, more specifically market surveillance measures including the verification of CO2 emission of vehicles in-service and measures to make sure that emission tests are representative of real-world emissions and not just lab emissions. Aside of the four main legislative elements, the Commission also highlights whether the eco-innovation of the previous legislation should continue in the new one. That is, in the previous legislation manufacturers can get credits for eco-innovations, which the standard test cycle does not capture. However, only one question in the survey mentions these eco-innovations and asks whether they should be continued or not, and it has therefore not been included in this analysis.
To each of the 10 selected questions, respondents were presented with four standard choices of which one of them was “I don’t know”. This provides a total of 40 variables. The 10 selected questions and the matching choices are presented in Table 3.
Table 3: Main variables for the correspondence analysis. The question numbers are retained from their number in the original survey. See appendix 3.1 for a complete list of survey question in the original survey.
Aside from the 10 questions from the analysis, a list of supplementary variables have been included in the correrpondance analysis. Table 4 lists these supplementary variables. Type and country are derived from the survey responses, whereas sector, revenue, employees, total passenger car sales and ZLEV sales have been
Name Question Answer-options
1. The emission reduction target rate
TargetRate * Question 5a: In comparison to the current reduction rates, do you think new targets for the period after 2020 should be set at levels which require a rate of reduction ____ that required under the current regulations:
Less than Similar to Higher than 2. Market surveillance measures
MSPotential * Question 10a: Do you think the Commission should explore what potential exists to further reduce the divergence between the test cycles and real world emissions?
Yes No Neutral MSRequirement * Question 10b: Should supplemental driving tests be implemented to give
values closer to real emissions?
Yes No Neutral MSdata * Question 10c: Should data based on mass monitoring of fuel consumption in
vehicles be used for monitoring programs?
Yes No Neutral 3. SME and small-scale producers
SMEcontinue * Question 15a: Should derogations for small volume manufacturers (less than 10,000 registrations per year) be continued?
Yes No Neutral SMEniche * Question 15b: Should derogations for niche manufacturers (10,000 to
300,000 registrations per year) be continued
Yes No Neutral 4. Incentives for low- and zero-emission vehicles
LZtech * Question 6b: Do you think EU legislation to regulate CO2 emission for LDVs will increase the likelihood of the EU automotive industry developing further CO2 reducing technology for conventional engines
Agree Neutral Disagree LZalterTech * Question 6c: Do you think EU legislation to regulate CO2 emission for LDVs
will increase the likelihood of the EU industry developing technology for alternative powertrains
Agree Neutral Disagree LZincentive * Question 13a: Should there be a mechanism in the CO2 legislation to
encourage the deployment of low- and zero emission vehicles
Yes No Neutral LZrequirement * Question 13b: Should manufacturers be required to produce and sell a
minimum proportion of low- and zero emission vehicles?
Yes No Neutral
constructed based on external information and coded into qualitative categories. The last four supplementary variables are only relevant for the ‘second’ correspondence analysis on the subset of car manufacturers, and have been given categories according to their values relative to each other.
Table 4: Supplementary variables.
The correspondence analysis have been performed based on the variables described above, hence the 67 respondents’ answer to the 10 selected questions of the Commission’s survey (Table 3) and their data on the supplementary variables (Table 4).