VW’s emission rigging scandal puts spotlight on testing standards

While the impact of Volkswagen’s emissions test rigging scandal in the US continues to reverberate through the global auto industry, amid fears that it could spiral into its LIBOR moment, the scandal is putting the spotlight on emission testing standards.

Campaigners point to the problems with current testing regimes, which are often not rigorous enough and conducted in such artificial environments that the emissions released during them bear little resemblance to those when driving. “In environmental and specialist circles, the massive deviations between emissions data from tests and the real world have been known about for years,” says Jos Dings, Director of the European NGO and campaign group Transport Environment.

In 1998, following a US scandal involving a number of car companies, the NGO published a report raising concerns about the divergence between the “predictable pattern of speeds and low accelerations that do not strain the engines” that allow engineers to build cars that “pass the test, but do not have low pollution levels when driven normally.” It noted how car manufacturers were able to use modern electronic equipment to enable the car to recognise that it was “being driven according to a specific test-cycle and adjust the combustion accordingly”.

The system in the US has been beefed up and campaigners note the use of independent checks by the Environmental Protection Agency, in addition to tests carried out by the car companies themselves, as well as the role that real world testing plays in assessing emissions and fuel use. But the campaigners have considerable concerns about other markets. In Europe in particular, high standards for emissions controls have not been matched by high testing standards and scrutiny.

“This is a direct result of Europe’s failure to properly regulate the industry — and it’s coming to roost,” says Dings. He points to the lack of real world tests currently in the European market (these are set to come in for light duty diesel vehicles from 2017), which make it easy for companies to fiddle the system. Even when “defeat devices” such as those employed by Volkswagen aren’t used, test regimes often produce very different results to real world situations, says Anup Bandivadekar, passenger vehicles programme director at the International Council on Clean Transportation (this was the organisation which commissioned the work that uncovered the disparities that caught VW out).

Tests are an “idealised representation of actual driving conditions — they take place within constant parameters. You know what the load, and power requirements are, and what the speed and acceleration, and the temperature are. All these conditions are pre-determined,” says Bandivadekar. “Of course, we expect real world emissions to be higher than those in lab settings but we don’t want them to be ten times higher.” He is hopeful that the real world driving tests, which use a portable emissions monitoring device, being introduced in Europe in 2017, will help introduce greater conformity.

Flaws in current system However, in Europe, the situation is exacerbated by a lack of a region-wide system for scrutinising testing regimes, which mean that standards vary greatly, as those that conduct tests compete for business. “We are officially a harmonised market for vehicles but testing houses compete with each other for business and you don’t win a lot of business if you are going to build a reputation for being particularly tough,” says Dings.” He points to other flaws in the system — such as the one by which companies were able to send so-called “golden vehicles” a prototype that only remotely resembles the car in the showroom, for testing. “We hear stories about very divergent practices and quality of testing across countries,” says Bandivadekar. “Defeat devices is the extreme — it is cheating, illegal activity, but there are big issues with respect to tests and whether they are being carried out in the spirit of the regulation or just by the book.”

However, it’s not just in Europe — where over half private cars are diesel — that test regimes pose problems. While India is set to rapidly enhance emissions standards (leapfrogging from Euro 4 emissions standards in 2017 to Euro 6 in 2020), testing regimes remain sub par. “As far as compliance, it is quite certain that India needs to invest a lot more into compliance testing both under lab settings and taking them on the roads,” says Bandivadekar, who also heads the ICCT’s India programme. “One of the great things about the US system is the in-use compliance programme under which they can draw a sample of vehicles and ensure that they are running as intended even after 50,000 km. India doesn’t have anything like that.”

Financial implications The lack of a rigorous testing system for emissions has massive real world consequences. Along with the serious health and environmental implications, they have financial implications for nations, given that the taxation on cars are based on reported C02 emission values, that might be far lower than real world emissions.

“Not only are cars emitting more greenhouse gases than we think — governments may be forgoing large revenues,” says Bandivadekar. Something to think about, particularly in Europe, where nations remain under fiscal pressure.

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