"really excessive" is quite going overboard. Of course you don't need 250hp to go forward. Yet those cars are less that 1% of the sales, blaming CO2 pollution on those is downright ridiculous, especially since they're not driven at wide open throttle all the time, which makes them much less than the stated output overall.
For example my 200HP car redlines at 8k rpm, thus the legal pollution (incl. CO2) emission check is evaluated by revving it constantly at ~6k for several minutes, which is absolutely not what daily operation looks like (more like 2.5k~4k, and not even WOT).
Case in point my car usually gulps 6~9 L/100km (open road ~ city) but when I picked up the car last week after the mandatory two year legal check, the ECU was reporting over 20L/100km means consumption, which I never ever managed to reach, even when doing some spirited driving for extended sessions.
On the other end of the spectrum, this pushes towards heavily downsized engines that operate at the limit most of the time in regular use, putting excessive strain on the hardware, resulting in terrible reliability, constant excessive pollution, and premature wear of the engine. No wonder people have to change cars at 150000~200000km. Comparatively, at 12yo, my car is nearing that threshold and still performs as good as new. I expect it to pass 500000km with flying colours.
For example my 200HP car redlines at 8k rpm, thus the legal pollution (incl. CO2) emission check is evaluated by revving it constantly at ~6k for several minutes, which is absolutely not what daily operation looks like (more like 2.5k~4k, and not even WOT).
Case in point my car usually gulps 6~9 L/100km (open road ~ city) but when I picked up the car last week after the mandatory two year legal check, the ECU was reporting over 20L/100km means consumption, which I never ever managed to reach, even when doing some spirited driving for extended sessions.
On the other end of the spectrum, this pushes towards heavily downsized engines that operate at the limit most of the time in regular use, putting excessive strain on the hardware, resulting in terrible reliability, constant excessive pollution, and premature wear of the engine. No wonder people have to change cars at 150000~200000km. Comparatively, at 12yo, my car is nearing that threshold and still performs as good as new. I expect it to pass 500000km with flying colours.