New EU regulation “ Roadworthiness tests for motor vehicles and their trailers* ” threatens car tuning and any after sales improvements to the roadworthiness, safety and energy efficiency

(* Roadworthiness Package - Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL Periodic roadworthiness tests for motor vehicles and their trailers and repealing Directive 2009/40/EC. Brussels, 13.7.2025 COM(2012) 380 final 2012/0184 (COD).)

Andrew Torrance, University of Kansas Law School, Kansas City, KS, USA
Eric von Hippel, MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, MA, USA
Jari Kuusisto University of Vaasa, Lapua, Finland

October 3, 2025

The European Union (“EU”) is considering the adoption of a law intended to improve the safety and environmental performance of motorized vehicles. This “Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on periodic roadworthiness tests for motor vehicles and their trailers” (the “Proposal”) would repeal Directive 2009/40/EC. While improving safety and environmental performance are worthy goals, the Proposal, as currently formulated, risks the very serious adverse consequence of harming innovation within the EU.

Users and enthusiasts who modify their own vehicles are a well-demonstrated and substantial source of technological innovation that directly improves the safety and environmental performance of motorized vehicles. Even such world leading car manufacturers such as BMW and Peterbilt are now tapping into expertise of users and user communities in car design. By effectively banning the consumer modification of motorized vehicles and their components and parts, the Proposal will thwart the very goals of safety and environmental quality it is intended to promote.

Professors Eric von Hippel from MIT, Andew W. Torrance from University of Kansas and MIT, and Jari Kuusisto from University of Vaasa and MIT are leading experts on consumer and producer innovation, on entrepreneurship by users, and on the government policy impacts on innovation. The recent European directive proposal on, ‘Roadworthiness tests for motor vehicles’*, has very much caught their attention. It is, they feel, a matter of grave concern, and they wish to lend their expertise and assistance to any who want to know more about the important negative impacts of this planned bill upon very valuable consumer innovation in the automotive field. They strongly suggest that the Proposal be amended prior to its adoption as EU law to ensure that the Proposal does not outlaw consumer innovation on motorized vehicles. Implemented wisely, the Proposal could increase rather than reduce the chances that motorized vehicle design will continue to draw upon consumer innovation to progress towards “an optimal level of safety and environmental standards.”

VALUABLE CONSUMER INNOVATION SHOULD NOT BE PUT AT RISK

Innovation research over the last several years has shown that consumers – rather than manufacturers - are frequently the actual developers of many innovations of importance to the general public in many fields, including major improvements to motor vehicles (von Hippel 2005). For example, in the days of the Ford Model T, it was users who first converted their vehicles to tractors to plow their fields, and to serve many other roles such as providing power to run farming equipment. Users were also the first to convert their vehicles to campers and to many other specialized applications (Franz 2005). The trend continues today. For example, users have been ahead of producers in the creation of the first pluggable hybrid automobiles (Calcars). Local Motors is risin user inputs to car development to a new level, by pooling together a large community of users whose expertise is recognized by such leading car manufacturers as BMW and Peterbilt. Furthermore, local motor produecs Rally Fighter car that has been designed by the users (Localmotors, 2012).

Consumer-developed innovations are a very large and very valuable resource for society at large. Tens of millions of consumers worldwide collectively spend tens of billions of dollars annually to develop innovative products and services for their own use (von Hippel et al., 2011). Many of these innovations are found valuable by and are adopted by peers. They are also frequently adopted by producers – including user-founded ventures - that find user innovations to be a valuable feedstock of field-proven prototypes (Shah et al. 2011). Robust consumer innovation activity and open peer-to-peer diffusion – a common consumer-innovator pattern – has also been shown to increase the overall social welfare (Raasch and von Hippel 2012).

By unintentionally blocking consumer innovation in motor vehicles – consumer-developers must modify their motor vehicles in order to innovate - this Proposal will deal a major blow to Europe’s innovativeness and entrepreneurship, and to the competitiveness of the EU auto industry over time.

RECOMMENDED AMENDMENTS TO THE PROPOSAL

To avoid this major damage to consumer innovation, we believe that the Proposal must be redrafted to encourage consumer modifications that positively impact or are neutral with respect to safety and environmental performance – and to prohibit only those with dangerous and negative impacts. If this cannot be accomplished by amending the current Proposal, then we propose that action on this Proposal be postponed pending further study to generate evidence on two important matters: (1) whether consumer innovations – as opposed to poor maintenance – in fact have a negative impact upon motor vehicle safety and environmental considerations; and (2) the positive impact that consumer innovation has upon motor vehicle safety and environmental considerations.

Fortunately, the potential harmful effects of the proposed legislation can be prevented easily by adopting a slightly different wording of the text of the Proposal. We recognize that we are experts in innovation, not EU law. Therefore, we defer to experts in EU law with respect to how precisely to express the intent of the amendments to the Proposal we suggest.

Specifically, we suggest a minor amendment to proposed Chapter I, Article 3, Section 9, as follows:

‘roadworthiness test’ means a verification that the parts and components of a vehicle comply with, or are at least as beneficial as, its safety and environmental characteristics in force at the time of approval, first registration or entry into service, as well as at the time of retrofitting;

To improve interpretive clarity, we also suggest that a new section (32) be added to the Preamble of the Proposal to reflect the vital contributions to both safety and environmental quality that consumer innovation generates. This new section would also serve to distinguish deliberate consumer modifications intended to achieve different or superior vehicle functionality, from the very different problems associated with poor vehicle maintenance. New section 32 would provide as follows:

Whereas:…
(32) Innovation by consumers is vital to achieve the goals of enhancing safety and environmental performance in motorized vehicles. Therefore, to encourage this beneficial source of innovation, consumer modifications made to motorized vehicles should be considered to comply with safety and environmental characteristics in force at the time of approval, first registration or entry into service, as well as at the time of retrofitting, unless a specific reason indicates otherwise.

We believe that amendments with effects equivalent to what we have proposed would accomplish the goals of the Proposal – to improve safety and environmental performance – while preserving the benefits that consumer innovation contributes to these same goals.

CONCLUSIONS

European Commission and Member States together make significant efforts to boost innovation and entrepreneurship as key drivers of competitiveness and economic growth. Each year hundreds of millions of Euros in taxpayers’ money is spent by the Member States and the European Commission with the aim to promote these key drivers of growth, innovation and entrepreneurship.

More specifically, the development of smart, green and integrated transport are highly important components of the European innovation agenda, (ref. Horizon 2020). In the opinions of von Hippel, Torrance, and Baldwin, this Proposal will better accomplish EU goals of enhancing safety and environmental quality if it protects and fosters innovation by motor vehicle owners, as reflected in their proposed amendments.

If passed without careful modifications, this piece of legislation will have a very harmful impact on motor vehicle-related innovation and entrepreneurial activity in Europe. However, if passed with amendments such as those proposed herein, safety and environmental quality will continue to be improved through continued innovation by consumers.

 
REFERENCES

Calcars How CalCars Green-Tuned an ’04 Prius into a PRIUS+ Plug-In Hybrid! http://www.calcars.org/priusplus.html

Franz, Kathleen (2005) Tinkering: Consumers Reinvent the Early Automobile, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA

European Commission (2011) Horizon 2020 - The Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, COM(2011) 808 final, Brussels, Belgium.

Local Motors (2012) http://www.localmotors.com

Raasch, Christina and Eric von Hippel (2012), “Modeling interactions between the user and producer innovation paradigms: User-contested and user-complemented markets for innovation” MIT Sloan School of Management Working Paper. (Free download from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? … id=2079763

Von Hippel, Eric (2005) Democratizing Innovation, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (Free download from http://mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ1.htm)

von Hippel, Eric, Susumu Ogawa, and Jeroen P. J. de Jong (2011) “The Age of the Consumer-Innovator” Sloan Management Review (Fall) vol. 53 Nr 1 pp. 27-35. (http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine … innovator/)

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