Ford has said ‘nothing less than a complete mindset change’, not only for Ford but the whole automotive industry is needed to tackle the global carbon dioxide emissions problem.

Ford spoke out about its ‘mindset change’ at the European petroleum industry's Europia conference yesterday and called for greater support from all key stakeholders. It wants vehicle manufacturers, customers, national governments, fuel suppliers and the European Commission to help adopt a more integrated approach to reducing CO2 from vehicles.

"If we are to stabilise climate change and avert a potential catastrophe, we need to stabilise concentrations of atmospheric CO2 at acceptable levels," said Lewis Booth, executive vice president of Ford.

"The scale of the challenge means that it's not enough to introduce two or three new environmental products and leave it at that,” said Booth.

Solutions suggested at the conference included:

Cleaner diesel

Advanced direct injection gasoline

Weight stabilisation and reduction

Alterative fuel vehicles (AFV)

Flexible fule vehicles

More research devoted to hybrid power packs, AFV technologies, plug-in hybrid technology, hybrid internal combustion engines and hydrogen fuel cells

Booth called on governments to increase investment in improved road and traffic management infrastructures, and to ensure that policy and incentives should be ‘technology neutral’.