CO2 reduction technologies for the European car and van fleet, a 2025–2030 assessment

When the European Union (EU) introduced its first set of mandatory new vehicle CO₂ standards in 2009, for passenger cars, and 2011, for light commercial vehicles, vehicle mass was chosen as a utility parameter. Using mass as the normalizing parameter allows heavier vehicles to emit more CO₂ and consume more fuel than lighter vehicles. As a result, the current EU CO2 target system offers little incentive to reduce the mass of vehicles: the lighter a manufacturer’s fleet, the lower its assigned CO₂ target. If a manufacturer reduces the mass of its vehicles, it must then also achieve a lower g/km target. This eliminates most of the manufacturer’s weight reduction advantage and puts mass reduction at a competitive disadvantage compared to other CO₂ saving technologies.

The situation is very different in a target system that is based on vehicle size instead. Here the manufacturer’s CO₂ target does not change if mass reduction is applied and the manufacturer benefits fully from the CO₂ reduction effect of lightweighting. In the United States, vehicle footprint is used as the utility parameter for both passenger cars and light trucks.

Because a weight-based CO₂ target system discourages the use of lightweighting, it takes away flexibility from vehicle manufacturers and thereby increases the cost for regulatory compliance. A recent ICCT study finds that for cars, the cost for meeting a 2025 target value of 70 g/km (as measured in the New European Driving Cycle – NEDC) is between 250 and 500 euros higher than would be the case in a footprint-based CO₂ target system. For light commercial vehicles, the cost for meeting a 2025 target value of 110 g/km is between 400 and 1,850 euros higher than if switching to a footprint based target system.

Attachments
CO2-reduction-technologies_fact-sheet_10102017_vF.pdf

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