Let’s stop pretending this is a mystery.

Renault Group and Stellantis are now effectively telling Europe that they need a special framework to make small electric cars viable again.

That is not a sign of industrial strength.

It is an admission of how far Europe has drifted away from building the car ordinary people actually need.

Not a halo EV.

Not another bloated SUV.

Not a compliance car dressed up as innovation.

A simple, affordable electric urban car.

That should not be the hardest thing for Europe to build.

And yet here we are.

For years, the answer from the industry was always some version of the same story:

Margins are too thin.

The segment is too hard.

The economics do not work.

China looked at the same market and did not write a white paper about it.

It built product.

That is the part Europe still does not want to confront.

If you need a new category just to have a chance of competing in affordable electric mobility, then the problem is not consumer demand.

The problem is that your industrial system no longer knows how to produce a cheap car profitably.

I am not arguing against safety.

I am arguing that Europe has managed to turn the affordable city car into a regulatory exception instead of a core product.

That should worry anyone who still believes Europe can lead in automotive.

Because if the future of mass-market mobility depends on asking Brussels for relief before you can even launch the vehicle, then you are not leading the transition.

You are negotiating your way into relevance.

The uncomfortable question is no longer whether M1E is a good idea.

It is this:

Can European OEMs still build a genuinely affordable electric car for normal people - or has that capability already moved elsewhere?

And one more:

If Europe finally launches M1E at scale, will it be a real product win - or just a delayed reaction to Chinese competition?