“The car industry’s efforts to stop the EU more accurately measuring the pollution of plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) risks setting up another major emissions scandal”, warned the think-tank Transport & Environment (T&E) on Tuesday 16 September.
Based on an analysis of the latest EU data published last week, T&E claimed that hybrid vehicles actually emit almost five times more CO2 than the official tests claim. This discrepancy is explained by the fact that vehicles are being driven less on the battery and burn more petrol than official tests show.
To tackle this situation, Commission Regulation [2023/443] has already introduced changes to the calculation of the utility factor, which will apply in two consecutive steps from 2025 and 2027 onwards. However, according to T&E, “maker and engine supplier lobby groups have called on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to drop the PHEV utility factors”, ten years after Dieselgate. This could lead to a sharp increase in the number of polluting cars in the EU by 2035.
Read the data analysis: https://aeur.eu/f/ih8 (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)