From 2021, the EU Commission will be obliged to monitor real fuel consumption for cars and light commercial vehicles
From 2021: EU wants to monitor fuel consumption – the most important thing to start with:
- New emissions test should show difference between real fuel consumption and fuel consumption stated by manufacturers
- From 2021, all data on new vehicles must be transmitted to the EU Commission
- Type of data transfer still unclear
In future, car manufacturers will have to record the actual consumption data of each new vehicle and submit it to the Commission. On the one hand, this should create more transparency. And on the other hand, drivers could also be “forced” to be frugal. For manufacturers, this means that new cars have to be economical not only on paper, but also in everyday use.
New emissions test
This regulation is, among other things, part of the new WLTP emissions test. In this way, the Commission wants to ensure that the consumption values quoted by the manufacturer deviate less from actual consumption, as has often been the case in the past. According to a study by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), the actual consumption of new cars was recently an average of 39 percent higher than the consumption in tests and thus the information provided by the car manufacturers.
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Data must be submitted from 2021
Since January 1, 2020, all new cars and light commercial vehicles must be equipped with the so-called On-Board Fuel Consumption Meter (OBFCM). This software records the fuel consumption of a vehicle or the energy consumption of electric or plug-in hybrid cars. From 2021, all vehicles registered for the first time must have OBFCM. The data will then begin to be transmitted to the EU Commission.
Many modern cars already have the new technology, so large manufacturing companies are prepared for the change. Manufacturers have previously only used the consumption data for internal purposes.
“What is new, however, is that from 2021 manufacturers will be obliged to record the data precisely and transmit it to the commission,” says Peter Mock from the ICCT.
BMW announced that preparations are already underway. Mercedes, for example, supports this new regulation and already has models with OBFCM on board.
“Compared to the certified standard values, deviations regularly occur in real driving,” says a Mercedes spokesman.
Fuel consumption: Processing of data transfer and publication dates still unclear
It is not yet clear how data transfer will be handled in the future. A variety of options are currently being discussed. The ICCT sees different options here. The data could be read out during the TÜV inspection or during random checks in road traffic and transmitted to the Commission. Centrally managed vehicle fleets such as car rental companies could collect the data and transmit it to the Commission automatically, wirelessly and directly from the vehicle. The different options involve a variety of “ifs” and “buts”.
Reading the data at the TÜV would significantly delay the transmission. In addition, in some EU countries the first TÜV check is only mandatory after four years. Samples or data collection from vehicle fleets would not be very representative.
“With automated transmission, the responsibility lies with the manufacturer, and the risk of errors through direct data transmission to the commission would be minimized,” says Mock.
What is also still unclear is which figures will ultimately be published. If the data provided is broken down into individual models, it is possible to indicate the real consumption for each model and to compare different models with each other. However, if the Commission only publishes an average value, the desired transparency would suffer.
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Drivers asked about economy
It would be possible through the new regulation and the data collected with it that drivers would also be forced to drive more economically. Experts can imagine that the introduction of a CO2 consumption tax would be conceivable. Drivers who are particularly economical would receive tax relief. However, drivers who consume more fuel would then have to pay more.
Long-term schedule
The current schedule stipulates that the EU Commission will publish an annual report between 2021 and 2026 during the testing phase on the difference between stated and real fuel consumption. The resulting concrete law for manufacturers to minimize this difference must be introduced by the Commission by 2030 at the latest.
Source: Spiegel.de
Article image: Shutterstock / By Ensuper
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