Working Paper

Mass reduction impacts on EU cost curves

This paper discusses the impacts of new vehicle mass reduction data on CO2 benefit and cost curves for EU light-duty vehicles in the 2020–2025 timeframe. This paper is the third in a series, with the previous two papers describing the methodology and data used to generate CO2 cost curves for EU vehicles. those papers have been published as icct working papers 2012-4 and 2012-5. Subsequent to the release of working papers 2012-4 and 2012-5, a new analysis on the cost of vehicle mass reduction has been completed by FEV, Inc. The associated cost data have the potential to alter the previously developed cost curves, and the analysis documented in this paper is designed to quantify such effect.

This paper also investigates the effect that CO2 regulatory structures that do not fully reward (or penalize) vehicle manufacturers for the CO2 influences of changes in vehicle mass might have on the overall compliance costs of CO2 standards.