Type approval and real-world CO2 and NOx emissions from EU light commercial vehicles

In the European Union, light duty vehicles (LDVs) are subject to emission targets for carbon dioxide (CO2) and limits for pollutants such as nitrogen oxides (NOx). CO2 emissions are regulated for both passenger vehicles (PV) and light commercial vehicles (LCV), as individual manufacturers are required to reach fleet averages of 130 g/km by 2015 and 175 g/km by 2017, respectively. In the case of PVs, it has been found that there is a significant divergence between real-world and type-approval CO2 emissions, which has been increasing annually, reaching 40% in 2014. On-road exceedances of regulated NOx emission limits for diesel passenger cars have also been documented. The current study investigated the LCV characteristics and CO2 and NOx emissions in the European Union. A vehicle market analysis found that LCVs comprise 17% of the diesel LDV market and while there were some data for CO2 emissions, there were hardly any data publicly available for NOx emissions. Monitoring the divergence in CO2 emissions revealed that it increased from 14% in 2006 to 33% in 2014, posing an additional annual fuel cost from 120€ in 2006 to 305€ in 2014, while a significant percentage of Euro 5 vehicles exceeded NOx emission standards.