If you've ever wondered why your car’s fuel consumption doesn’t match the claims made for it - and I’ve often experienced significant gaps during test drives - the EU has some interesting answers.
The European Commission has been monitoring the fuel consumption and emissions levels of new cars over the last three years, and found that fuel consumption is around 20% higher than the official Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP) tests suggest.
The WLTP was introduced in 2017 and is the test often cited by car manufacturers in their advertising for the fuel consumption of their cars.
It was data provided to the EU by a number of manufacturers and gathered from half a million cars registered in 2021 that formed the basis of the report. Cars and other vehicles were fitted with monitors to harvest the data.
The new Commission report now concludes that the average gap between what the WLTP results claim petrol cars can achieve and what they do achieve in real world conditions is 23.7 %. For emissions, the difference between WLTP tests and those in real world conditions is 34.6 grammes of CO2.
The findings also suggest the gap between fuel consumption test figures and actual consumption for diesel cars is 18.1%. CO2 emissions were found to be 34.6g higher for diesel engines.
The report says the "real-world fuel consumption experienced by drivers is still around one fifth higher than what the official type-approval documents show, and it is important that the public is made aware of this."
The report also draws attention to the issue of SUV’s and luxury cars becoming heavier in recent years and therefore consuming more fuel:
"This gap appears to be particularly wide for heavier vehicles, such as SUVs and luxury vehicles, whose emissions are already significantly greater than other cars. This larger gap could exacerbate the impacts of wider observed fleet trends, where average vehicle sizes and weights have been increasing, reducing the effects of fuel efficiency improvements. The link between the gap and vehicle mass will need to be monitored closely in the coming years."
Emissions figures for new plug-in hybrid electric vehicles registered in 2021 are also a focus of the report, with the real-world CO2 found to be on average 3.5 times (100g CO2/km) higher than the official WLTP ones.
"This confirms that these vehicles are currently not realising their potential, in particular as they are not being charged and driven fully electrically as frequently as assumed. To better reflect the real-world situation, the Commission has already introduced changes to the calculation used for the official test procedure, which will apply as of 2025, and may need to be further adjusted based on real-world data."
The Commission concedes that this first data is "not yet broad or representative enough to draw firm conclusions", but does provide "valuable preliminary insights for car emissions, in how the official and real-world CO2 emissions compare across vehicle types and manufacturers."
The EU now wants more comprehensive data from manufacturers.
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