Engineering news
New cars from major OEMs including Mercedes, BMW and Peugeot are now swallowing around 50% more fuel than their laboratory test results, new on-the-road data compiled by the Brussels-based Transport & Environment (T&E) has revealed.
The sustainable development lobby group said that the gap between official and real-world performance found in many car models has grown so wide that it cannot be explained through known factors including test manipulations. While this does not constitute proof of ‘defeat devices’ being used to fiddle fuel economy tests, similar to that used by Volkswagen, T&E said the findings should prompt EU governments to extend probes into NOx defeat devices to CO2 tests and petrol cars too.
Greg Archer, clean vehicles manager at T&E, said: “Like the air pollution test, the European system of testing cars to measure fuel economy and CO2 emissions is utterly discredited. The Volkswagen scandal was just the tip of the iceberg and what lies beneath is widespread abuse by carmakers of testing rules enabling cars to swallow more than 50% more fuel than is claimed.”
The distorted laboratory tests are costing a typical motorist €450 a year in additional fuel costs compared to what carmakers’ marketing materials claim, the report found. But the car manufacturers are continuing to try to delay the introduction of a new test (WLTP) to be introduced in 2017, said T&E.
On average, two-thirds of the claimed gains in CO2 emissions and fuel consumption since 2008 have been delivered through manipulating tests with only 13.3 g/km of real progress on the roads set against 22.2 g/km of ‘hot air’, according to the report. This means that in the last three years there has been no improvement in fuel economy from new vehicles on the road. Only Toyota would have met its 2015 target without exploiting test flexibilities whereas all the other major carmakers have met their legal limits through exploiting test loopholes.
Archer added: “This widening gap casts more doubt on how carmakers trick their customers in Europe to produce much better fuel efficiency in tests than can be achieved on the road. The only solution is a comprehensive investigation into both air pollution and fuel economy tests and all car manufacturers to identify whether unfair and illegal practices, like defeat devices, may be in use. There must also be a comprehensive overhaul of the testing system.
Cars are responsible for 15% of Europe’s total CO2 emissions and are the single largest source of emissions in the transport sector. The EU’s first obligatory rules on carbon emissions require car manufacturers to limit their average car to a maximum of 130 grams of CO2 per km by 2015, and 95g by 2021.