European Commissioner in charge of Internal Market, Industry Elzbieta Bienkowska | EPA/Olivier Hoslet Diesel at dead end as Europe shifts to electric The Commission plans a series of measures favoring batteries over fossil fuels.

Europe's car industry took a gamble that highly efficient, low-polluting diesel engines were crucial to its future. The bet hasn't paid off.

Now Elżbieta Bieńkowska, the industry and internal market commissioner, is calling on one of the Continent's most important industries, together with governments and the EU, to shift gears and not fall behind the rest of the world in electric cars.

“The others are really ... much faster than us, for example in electric cars, in autonomous cars," she told POLITICO.

Bieńkowska, a 52-year-old former Polish deputy prime minister, is now feeling the heat from the mess created by diesel engines. She's due to testify Monday before the European Parliament's Dieselgate Committee.

The committee was set up in the wake of last year's Volkswagen emissions scandal, following the German carmaker's admission it had placed illegal devices in 11 million of its diesel engine cars to cheat on emissions tests. The committee is trying to figure out why it was U.S., not European, regulators who caught VW, whether other carmakers are affected, and problems with Europe's method of certifying and testing cars.

The scandal set off a blame game between Brussels and national regulators — each trying to shift responsibility to the other. Bieńkowska insisted Brussels has done nothing wrong.

"The easiest solution is to blame one another, and then everybody [says], 'Let’s blame the Commission,'" she said. "I am very angry ... when I hear that it’s bad press for the Commission. Why? It’s bad press for the European automotive industry ... national authorities, or maybe national type approval authorities, but not for the Commission ... You can blame the Commission for everything, but not for this."

Looking to the future

Bieńkowska wants the focus to shift from the mistakes of the past, to figuring out a way forward for the industry.

The problem for Europe is that its big carmakers have invested enormous resources in diesel, because diesel engines are powerful and emit less carbon dioxide than gasoline engines.

Diesel's green credentials, helped by government support, made it a hit — and such cars now make over half of the Continent's fleet. That contrasts with only about one in 20 elsewhere in the world, said Greg Archer, clean vehicles director at Transport & Environment, an NGO.

But there's a downside to diesel. Such engines emit nitrogen oxide, the main ingredient of smog. It's also difficult and expensive to balance performance and emissions, which is why Volkswagen resorted to cheating.

The car industry "bet on the wrong horse" with diesel, Archer said.

In the wake of the VW scandal, life is only going to get more difficult for carmakers relying on diesel.

Tougher tests on the road, due to become mandatory from next year, as well as requirements to further reduce nitrogen oxide emissions, make diesel engines "prohibitively expensive, especially in small vehicles," Archer said.

“Electrification has to come to Europe to meet tougher emission standards and the diesel is going to pay the highest toll,” Stefano Aversa, deputy chairman of the AlixPartners consultancy, told Automotive News Europe, adding this would cause huge challenges for automakers and suppliers “because they will need to change their powertrain manufacturing infrastructure.”

In a June study, the consultancy predicted that diesel car sales would fall to 9 percent of the European market in 2030, down from 52 percent today.

Meanwhile, batteries are getting cheaper and more efficient, making electric cars more competitive. Norway has seen Tesla, the electric automaker, become the country's most popular new car.

That's forcing a recalculation on the part of the industry.

Let's go electric

Volkswagen in June announced a major overhaul of its company strategy, including an electric mobility offensive and adding battery technology, digitalization and autonomous driving as new core competencies.

Renault, already one of the world's leading electric car makers, is mulling dropping diesel altogether, according to a Reuters report. "Tougher standards and testing methods will increase technology costs to the point where diesel is forced out of the market," a source aware of the company's thinking told the agency.

Carmakers in Europe "have time to be able to catch up, but they undoubtedly need to make a big commitment to create a significant market for electric vehicles in Europe to begin to scale their production and sell around the world," said Archer.

Bieńkowska wants to hurry that process along.

Instead of continuing to invest in researching better diesel and gasoline engines, "We should rather shift this money to electric cars, to zero emission cars. This should also be a reflection from the scandal,” she said.

That will require support from the Commission, including finance, to overcome the two big hurdles to a wider acceptance of electric cars: the comparatively short distances they can drive before they need to be recharged, and their price, she said.

"People will not buy it if they can only drive [short distances] and they are very expensive," said Bieńkowska. The Commission is planning legislative proposals, including targets, to promote electric cars.

If it works, it could mean a dramatic change for the fossil fuel industry, which is fighting the effort to favor electric cars.

Electric cars have “limited pull from customers and very, very high costs,” John Cooper, director-general of FuelsEurope, an industry lobby group, said at a Brussels briefing this week, condemning the Commission's pro-electric ideas as “rigging the market.”

"The utility of liquid fuels is unbeatable,” he said.

But that’s not Bieńkowska's view. “We should probably concentrate and focus ourselves more on electric cars,” she said.

Saim Saeed contributed to this article.