The European Commission proposed, on Thursday 10 November, a revision of the ‘Euro 6’ regulation on vehicle emissions, the main innovation of which is to extend its scope to emissions generated by brakes and tyres in view of a European car fleet dominated by electric vehicles. On the other hand, the text remains timid on emission limit values.
“There is a feeling that electric vehicles are totally clean - they are much cleaner in terms of CO2 - this is obvious - but electric vehicles are roughly 40% heavier than the average combustion engine vehicle and therefore emit more of these particles (from the use of brakes and tyre friction)”, said the Commissioner for Internal Market, Thierry Breton, insisting that this reform is a long-term one and accompanies technological developments.
“We are the first to regulate brakes and tyres... and batteries”, confirmed the Commissioner to EUROPE, underlining the importance of acting on this issue. According to the European Commission, emissions from tyres are the largest source of microplastics in the environment (up to 90% of the particles emitted from road transport by 2050).
The Commission thus hopes to reduce brake emissions very quickly, to achieve a 27% reduction for brakes by 2035, with a tightening of the rules from 2035 onwards, except for lorries and buses and heavy goods vehicles (until a methodology is established).
However, no targets seem to be given for tyres. In its proposal, the Commission states that it should prepare a report on tyre abrasion by the end of 2024 to examine measurement methods and the state of knowledge in order to propose tyre abrasion limits.
The other major innovation of the text is the simplification of the regulatory framework. This new regulation merges the ‘Euro 6’ regulation for light vehicles and the regulation for heavy vehicles (buses and lorries). An internal source explained that in 2005, the documents needed for ‘Euro 4’ were about 180 pages, compared to 860 pages today for ‘Euro 6’.
Responding to EUROPE, the same source assured that this simplification would not increase the risk of fraud, as was the case with ‘Dieselgate’. The regulation intends to rely on an in-vehicle monitoring system that would measure emissions throughout a vehicle’s lifetime. This system would alert the user to the need for repairs to the engine or pollution control systems if necessary.
Little change in limit values
On the limit values front, however, the proposed progress remains timid (see EUROPE 13057/7) due to the current gloomy economic situation, but also to the recent agreement between the EU co-legislators to ban the sale of combustion engine vehicles from 2035 (see EUROPE 13053/1).
For cars and vans, emission limits are set at the lowest level currently imposed under the ‘Euro 6’ standard for cars, thus imposing lower limits for vans, says the European Commission in its explanatory memorandum. Furthermore, the proposed approach is intended to be technologically “neutral” and no longer distinguishes between petrol and diesel cars.
For example, the limit for NOx is 60 mg/km for petrol cars and 80 mg/km for diesel cars with the ‘Euro 6’ standard. With the ‘Euro 7’ standard, this limit will be 60 mg/km, regardless of the technology used, a senior official explained.
It is therefore an ‘intermediate option’, the institution acknowledges. “This choice has been made in order to balance the need to improve environmental performance with the need to avoid disproportionate investments for vehicles that will no longer be sold after 2035. Beyond a certain threshold, costs increase significantly faster than the environmental benefits”, it explains, always in its explanatory memorandum.
However, Commissioner Thierry Breton assured that the results will be convincing, according to the studies. “By 2035, NOx emissions from light vehicles should be reduced by almost 35% compared to what we have today in ‘Euro 6’ and for heavy duty vehicles it’s more than 50%, so this is something that is really important for all of us”, he said.
The proposal extends the limits on ammonia, “a pollutant that plays a key role in the formation of urban smog”, says the EU institution. The proposal also regulates formaldehyde, “an irritant and carcinogenic gas” and nitrous oxide for lorries and buses. “This pollutant, a powerful greenhouse gas, is regulated for the first time by the Euro standards”, the European Commission adds.
In addition, the question of the application of the rules has been extended to 200,000 km or 10 years of use “whichever comes first” for light vehicles and buses, to 375,000 km for heavy goods vehicles under 16 tonnes, and 875,000 km for heavy goods vehicles over 16 tonnes.
However, the relative end of the internal combustion engine in Europe - 20% of vehicles on the road in 2050 will still be thermal, according to the European Commission - does not mean that the European industry cannot continue to produce and export thermal vehicles, according to Thierry Breton.
He believes that the European industry must “accompany” the transition in other parts of the world, by exporting the latest generation of thermal cars, particularly to Africa and Asia. “We will have the know-how to enable our industries and the European ecosystem to export to these markets”.
To consult the proposed regulation: https://aeur.eu/f/40C (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)