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Most passenger cars on EU roads emit the same quantity of carbon dioxide as 12 years ago, despite new legislation designed to lower their emissions, the EU’s external auditor has found.
In 2010, new regulations set an EU-wide target to lower average CO2 emissions from newly registered cars. They required manufacturers to declare a vehicle’s emissions to regulators and they would be ordered to pay an excess-emissions premium if targets were not met. Ambitions have increased over time in order to prepare the sector for the 2035 zero-emissions target.
But a report published by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) found that while improvements in engine technology and the introduction of hybrid powertrains have made engines more efficient, cars have also increased in size, negating any efficiency gains.
Overall mass was found to have increased by around 10% between 2011 and 2022, while engine power rose by 25%.
“The EU’s green revolution can only happen if there are far fewer polluting vehicles, but the challenge is huge,” said Pietro Russo, who led the audit. “A true and tangible reduction in cars’ CO2 emissions will not occur as long as the combustion engine prevails, but at the same time, electrifying the EU’s car fleet is a major undertaking.”
Car manufacturers have previously exploited loopholes in test requirements to obtain reduced emissions in the laboratory. In 2015, it was discovered that Volkswagen was using ‘cheat devices’ to alter the perceived emissions produced by their vehicles in regulatory pre-release testing, which increased when they were on the road. The scandal ultimately saw VW executives facing criminal charges.
As a result, a new laboratory test cycle that reflected actual driving conditions became mandatory in September 2017. This effectively narrowed, but did not eliminate, the gap between laboratory and real-world emissions, the ECA said.
Over the past decade, emissions have remained constant for diesel cars, while they have marginally decreased (-4.6%) for petrol cars. The same applies to hybrid cars, whose real-world emissions tend to be much higher than those recorded in the laboratory.
In an attempt to reflect the real situation better, the proportional use of electric and combustion engines will be adjusted, but only from 2025.
Until then, plug-in hybrids will continue to be treated as low-emission vehicles, to the benefit of car manufacturers. They will also continue to apply some of the provisions introduced in the CO2 regulation that enabled them to save almost €13bn (£11bn) in excess-emissions premiums for 2020 alone.
The auditors found that only electric vehicles (which jumped from one in every 100 new car registrations in 2018 to almost one in seven in 2022) have driven the reduction in average on-the-road CO2 emissions witnessed in recent years. But the road ahead is bumpy, as the EU faces significant difficulties in accelerating the uptake of electric vehicles.
The first hurdle to overcome is access to raw materials to build enough batteries. EU auditors have also expressed concerns about inadequate charging infrastructure; 70% of all car battery chargers in the EU are concentrated in just three countries (the Netherlands, France and Germany). Affordability is also crucial, given the higher upfront costs of electric cars – consumers may prefer to keep their old polluting vehicles for longer.
