On 15 March, Swiss parliament passed the new CO₂ act. Unnoticed by most people, the law contains a small sensation. It puts cars with internal combustion engines (ICEVs) on an equal footing with electric vehicles when calculating CO₂ emissions if the cars are fuelled with CO₂-neutral eFuels.
While politicians and industry in Europe are still arguing about this issue and cannot seem to find a solution, Switzerland is orientating itself on the physical facts. Renewably produced eFuels are (practically) CO₂-neutral. Engines running on them must therefore be assessed differently to combustion engines that are fuelled with fossil fuels.
Specifically, the legislator wants importers of vehicles to be allowed to get credits for their vehicle fleet for the amount of CO₂-neutral eFuels that they feed into the distribution network. If e.g. a vehicle is imported for which as much eFuels are fed into the grid as the vehicle consumes during its lifetime mileage, this vehicle can be included in the calculation with 0 g CO₂/km, just like an electric vehicle, with the difference that it can also charge coal power and still be considered CO₂-neutral.
You can find article 11a in the voting text here (in German).