No big trucks for little roads: American OEMs say EU is blocking imports

Looking beyond one brand but at just a single nation, in the same year, Germany bought a total of 3,291 pickup trucks out of 2.8 million new vehicles. So it’s pretty clear that most European car buyers have no interest in being fed a diet of oversized pickups that aren’t optimized for their roads and which are far more deadly to other road users than smaller and lighter crossovers and cars. The full-size pickup is little more than a niche vehicle in Europe.

But the big truck is evidently now emblematic of America and must be accepted by our trading partners, regardless of whether there’s customer demand. Unlike the EU, Japan acquiesced to US demands to accept US vehicle standards, and a potential Japanese government order for Ford F-150 trucks was praised by President Trump in October.

Matt Blunt, president of the American Automotive Policy Council, a lobbying group that has criticized the EU’s move to tighten IVA rules, told Ars that “these vehicles meet US safety standards and the proposed changes to the EU’s IVA regulation run directly counter to the commitments made in the US-EU Framework Agreement.”

A spokesperson for GM told Ars that “We support efforts by the EU and US to work jointly toward mutual recognition of automotive standards, so we can continue to respond to customer demand for our North America-built vehicles and provide choice to customers, many of whom rely on our vehicles to support their livelihoods.”

We’ve also reached out to Ford and will update this article if we hear back.