Italy will be joining France and Germany in helping the automotive industry, which has been hammered by the coronavirus crisis.
However, unlike Berlin and Paris, which have focused on"green" cars, Rome is also targeting"Euro 6" thermally efficient vehicles as electric and hybrid cars still have little foothold in Italy. Last year, electric cars accounted for just 0.56% of total Italian registrations, with hybrids at 6.1%, according to foreign car manufacturers association Unrae.
Marco Opipari, an analyst at Fidentiis, said cars produced in Italy before the lockdown and left unsold were all Euro 6 vehicles. "If you want to address this backlog of unsold cars and provide oxygen to the industry, you need to support purchases of combustion engine cars too," he said.