"The current design of vehicle CO₂ regulations is focused only on tailpipe emissions that occur during the use phase. This fails to consider the increasingly significant emissions from the production and end-of-life phase," EUROFER director general Axel Eggert said in a statement. 

"There is the real possibility that this will create an incentive for emissions to be shifted from the use phase to the production phase. This is because of the use of materials and CO₂-reduction technologies that are more emissions-intensive during production. This burden shift could have the unintended consequence of undermining the CO₂ reductions achieved in the use phase."

The EU is writing rules for vehicular carbon dioxide emissions. Draft proposals are to be published later this year. EUROFER said it believes the way to approach the rules is to allow for the voluntary use of life cycle assessment combined with a carbon dioxide credit. 

"This will help assess the environmental performance of vehicles in a more holistic way," Eggert said.