FuelsEurope comments on the T&E Study – January 2020

Work done by Ricardo for T&E was featured in a number of articles. We believe that there are important conclusions that were omitted.

First, we should recognise that Ricardo have once again produced outstanding work, as they have done many times before for the European Commission, T&E, FuelsEurope, car makers and others.

This latest work shows that the newest diesel cars are in fact remarkably clean, comfortably meeting the Euro 6 standard thanks to the European Emissions Technology (Euro 6d temp) which is a real success story.

T&E’s report could lead one to believe there is a major problem. Ricardo’s own explanation is more complete and concludes that “After weighting the results, all regulated gaseous emissions and PM [mass and number of particulates] were comfortably compliant with Euro 6 limits... [Weighted] PM increases by a significant factor [due to the regeneration process], but from a very low initial level to just over 1mg/km, still less than 20% of the limit value”.

FuelsEurope believes that the DPF regeneration process should be better addressed in the testing protocols. Nevertheless, the conclusions remain very convincing about the remarkable progress made by European car manufacturers to develop very clean Diesel technology.