For not taking global heating seriously

We were wrong to be so slow to take global heating seriously, despite knowing about our contribution to it for at least three decades.

We are sorry.

For decades, we have known how our products pollute the air you breathe and contribute to the worst problem humanity faces, the climate crisis.

We did good things. More than 25 years ago, we sold you hybrid cars. At that time, we were frontrunners. We could have taken the lead in ending fossil fueled cars. Instead, we decided to keep polluting.

When researchers looked at our fossil fuel car production plans, we were found to be the world’s worst largest car manufacturer. Our plans posed a direct threat to reaching the target of the Paris agreement.

For clinging to polluting cars

We were wrong to cling to the polluting past for so long. We planned to continue making millions of polluting fossil fuel vehicles long passed when the science said we should stop. Going against the evidence of heating and the interest of our customers.

We are sorry.

Just the fossil fuel cars we sold in 2021 would emit over 700 million tonnes of CO₂ over their lifetime. This is the same as 190 coal-fired power stations running for an entire year. We were planning to sell 110 million fossil fuel cars until 2040.

We did work on alternatives, but the dirty ones. While it became ever clearer that small battery electric vehicles are the cleanest direct alternatives to fossil fueled cars, we continued to put our money and lobby influence behind hybrid and hydrogen cars. Hybrid cars are still polluting (and more so than car makers have often admitted), and unnecessary because electric cars work. Hydrogen cars are extremely inefficient and currently only one percent of global hydrogen production comes from renewable sources.

Perhaps worst of all, our cars made in the three decades since 1992 (when the world agreed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, acknowledging the reality of global heating and urgency of action), and up until 2022, will add an enormous, estimated 15.8 billion t/CO₂e in their lifetimes. This comes with an estimated damage cost in the region of €10.7 trillion (see note for method).

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For selling bigger, dirtier cars

We were wrong to try to sell ever bigger cars to our consumers. They are dangerous for your kids, they are more polluting, use a lot of resources and crowd your streets.

We are sorry.

SUVs and other huge cars gave us a bigger margin than smaller cars. We were only focused on maximising profit, at the expense of everyone else. We had a moment of revelation in late 2023 when the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned our ‘Born to Roam’ SUV advert for breaching rules on social responsibility. We painfully accept their conclusion that our adverts “presented and condoned the use of vehicles in a manner that disregarded their impact on nature and the environment. As a result, they had not been prepared with a sense of responsibility to society.”

For misleading consumers

We were wrong to pretend to be green when we weren’t. We used our early reputation for hybrids to look environmentally responsible when we were actually focused on selling polluting cars.

We are sorry.

We pretended to be part of the solution, we even said “carbon is the enemy”, while we stuck to polluting cars. We partnered with the Olympic Games, promoting our fossil fuel cars while selling ourselves as a ‘sustainable mobility partner’. For the 2024 Paris Olympics, we will for the first time live up to these words. And, if we don’t, we have no right to be associated with the greatest event in sport.

For lobbying for pollution

We were wrong to lobby against a faster shift to cleaner cars. We persuaded politicians to stick to the old ways of polluting your streets and heating the planet.

We are sorry.

It wasn’t only our wrong business decisions, we did everything we could to prevent politicians from doing the right thing. We lobbied governments around the world to slow down the transition to cleaner vehicles. We put pressure on them to protect the fossil fuel car and focus on false solutions like hybrids and hydrogen. At the G7 summit in June 2022, we successfully lobbied Japan to weaken the summit’s climate ambition by removing a zero-emission vehicle target from the governments’ final statement. In fact, we have been found lobbying against climate action on every continent.

Even this year, we gave our public support to the UK government watering down the petrol and diesel car ban. During the climate summit in Glasgow, we failed to commit to phasing out all fossil cars by 2040. Until a few weeks ago, we were using our car dealers in our efforts to lobby against policies for cleaner cars in the United States. Without our backroom efforts, the fossil fuel car phase out would have gone much faster. We did not respect the facts or care enough about a liveable planet, we cared about profits.