Brussels, 29/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - the managing director of the Association for Emission Control by Catalyst (AECC), Dirk Bosteels, contradicted a number of statements by car manufacturers about emission control systems during an intervention on Thursday 28 April at the European Parliament's special investigative committee on the Volkswagen scandal.
For the ambient temperature needed for these systems to operate, he says there is no need to deactivate the post=treatment emissions control system in terms of the outside temperature because the only temperature that matters is that in the exhaust line, which has to be of several hundreds of degree.
Bosteels said the control system was not restricted to car performance: it is perfectly possible to limit the consumption of fuel and the emission of nitrogen oxide (NOx) while ensure the engine ticks over properly. Moreover, the battle against polluting gas emissions does not necessarily have to be to the detriment of combating greenhouse gas emissions, carbon dioxide (CO2), he said.
Next, asked about the assumed prohibitive cost of the technology available to car manufacturers, the expert said reports by external bodies situated the price in a range of between 240 and 450 euros. In his opinion, the challenge was not so much the price of technology, which is rather low, but the size of vehicles. Emission control systems need space that isn't available in small cars, he explained.
His intervention undermines industry's arguments, said a parliamentary source, pointing out that a number of car manufacturers, such as Renault, have argued that the system needed to be de-activated between 17 and 35° Celsius to preserve the engine's performance. Also, the cost he gave was not as high as suggested by some MEPs, in the EPP group, for instance, who also say that the Euro 6 standards are unrealistic given the pressure of competition.
Later in the discussion, the expert told MEPs that according to Germany's federal office for motor vehicles in circulation, the Kraftfahrt Bundesamt (KBA), it is already possible to achieve a conformity factor equating to one of the Euro 6 standards, which would demonstrate that reliable technology already exists and the conformity factors laid down by the member states in October 2015 are not justified, explained a source who's been following the question.
The member states asked for the emissions tests in real driving conditions for a conformity factor to be set, in other words, a tolerance for exceeding the level of emission laid down in European legislation, by up to 2.1, or 110%, for new models by September 2017, which would then be reduced to 1.5 (50%) by January 2020 (see EUROPE 11421).
On Tuesday 26 April, Regulation 2016/646 amending Regulation 692/2008 on emissions from private cars and small vans (Euro 6), including the introduction of conformity factors for real driving conditions emissions tests, was published in the European Union's Official Journal. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)