Emission rates of VW models in Europe as high as in the USA

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By Jens Borken-Kleefeld, IIASA Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases Program

Earlier this week, Volkswagen admitted fraudulent software causing high exhaust emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from several of its diesel car models during normal driving. That diesel cars emit many times more NO_x in normal driving than their legal limit has been known for more than a decade in Europe. The surprise to me is that the enforcement of these legal limits is pursued now from the USA and not from a European authority, and that – in the face of a public outcry – the automaker admitted the same software was not only in US models.

Following this announcement, I took a second look into the on-road emission data from Europe and compared it with data collected by colleagues in the USA. We find that VW diesel cars in Europe emit as much NO_x as the incriminated models in the USA, as shown in the chart for VW Golf, Jetta and Passat models model years 2009 to 2013.

On-road data US: Peter McClintock, remote sensing campaign by Envirotest Inc. for Colorado (2013). On-road data Europe: Jens Borken-Kleefeld, analyzing remote sensing campaigns by AWEL Zurich (2009-2013). Each filtered for normal driving conditions.

We measured significant differences between manufacturers, yet on the whole the gap between officially certified and real-driving NO_x emissions from diesel cars in Europe has been growing. The few models with low emissions are by far outnumbered by cars with high NO_x emissions. Yet, VW’s emission levels are not even the worst in class.

References:
US EPA Notice of Violation, 18 Sept 2015. http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/cert/documents/vw-nov-caa-09-18-15.pdf

Announcement by VW: http://www.volkswagenag.com/content/vwcorp/info_center/en/news/2015/09/Volkswagen_AG_has_issued_the_following_information.html

Chen and J. Borken-Kleefeld, “Real-Driving Emissions from Cars and Light Commercial Vehicles – Results from 13 Years Remote Sensing at Zurich/CH,” Atmospheric Environment 88 (May 2014): 157–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.atmosenv.2014.01.040

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.