The European Commission wants European Union (EU) governments to give feedback on moves towards tougher vehicle emissions tests with a view to a vote on the matter on 28 October, according to a Bloomberg report. The legal arm of the EU is looking at drawing up tougher emissions testing legislation in the wake of the VW emissions affair with new testing regimes for nitrogen oxides (NOx) being looked at for 2017. The dates were revealed after exchanges this week in the European parliament between MEPs and members of the EU Parliament's environment committee. "We want to act fast," Gwen Cozigou, a director in the commission's enterprise-policy department, told the members of the EU Parliament's environment committee.
Significance: Acting fast is all very well but with a diesel passenger car parc of over 50% in the EU any changes to the current legislative timetable need to be very carefully considered. There is no major European automotive manufacturer that is not heavily invested in diesel precisely because of its popularity, and lead times and development cycles means it is not the work of a moment to change strategy in such a fundamental way as could potentially happen if the European Commission attempts to implement a stricter timetable for lowering NOx emissions. The whole reason for diesel's dominance in the EU is because if a legislative and tax regime that has been focused on lowering CO2. Diesel has been a successful tool for the OEMs in meeting these frameworks so it is problematic if the European Commission starts to switch to an approach that re-focuses on NOx emissions on a relatively short timescale. The changes that are being looked at are already due to be implemented are part of the real driving emissions (RDE) testing program. There is a growing will among regulators to tackle the long-known-about discrepancy between lab emissions testing and real-world driving emissions. In the run-up to a potential full implementation (100% of the fleet) of WLTP in 2021, European authorities have already moved to close the gap between NOx observations during homologation and values seen on-road, by introducing RDE. This will be implemented for monitoring and familiarisation in January 2016 and will be mandatory from September 2017. Previous reports detailing the new proposals being discussed by the Commission would see the introduction of binding real-world tests for new types of diesel cars in September 2017. However, there would be some leeway that would allow all-new diesel models being introduced in the region to exceed the 80 mg/km EU limit on NOx emissions by as much as 60%. This flexibility would apply until September 2019, after which the NOx limit would have to be met, albeit including a significant margin for error.
