New cars, including the Mercedes A, C and E class, BMW 5 series and Peugeot 308, are now swallowing around 50% more fuel than their lab test results, new on-the-road results compiled by Transport & Environment (T&E) reveal.
The organisation is responsible for promoting, at EU and global level, a transport policy based on the principles of sustainable development
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According to their report, the gap between official and real-world performance found in many car models has grown so wide that it cannot be explained through known factors including test manipulations.
While this does not constitute proof of ‘defeat devices’ being used to fiddle fuel economy tests, similar to that used by Volkswagen, EU governments must extend probes into defeat devices to CO2 tests and petrol cars too.
The gap between official test results for CO2 emissions/fuel economy and real-world performance has increased to 40% on average in 2014 from 8% in 2001, according to the organisations report. T&E said the gap has become a chasm and, without action, will likely grow to 50% on average by 2020.
On average, two-thirds of the claimed gains in CO2 emissions and fuel consumption since 2008 have been delivered through manipulating tests with only 13.3 g/km of real progress on the roads set against 22.2 g/km of ‘hot air’, according to the report.
This means that in the last three years there has been no improvement in fuel economy from new vehicles on the road.
Only Toyota would have met its 2015 target without exploiting test flexibilities whereas all the other major carmakers have met their legal limits through exploiting test loopholes.
