Nick Molden discusses with Chris Caldwell, CEO of United Renewables on his podcast Conversation on Climate.Nick and Chris discuss why electric vehicles may not be the future, the challenges and opportunities around adoption of electric vehicles.
Nick Molden, and former Volkswagen executive Oliver Schmidt, have joined forces to confront the thorniest issues facing the industry. The podcast brings together two of the sector's most experienced independent analysts . Their podcast - Molden and Schmidt - is available on Spotify, YouTube, Apple and the Emissions Analytics website.
Is there something strange happening with WLTP?
The Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP) is the new laboratory certification test for light duty vehicles in Europe. In particular, it is used for the fuel economy labelling of vehicles and the carbon dioxide (CO2) results will be used in labelling and manufacturer fleet average CO2 calculations. Missing the fleet average targets could trigger significant fines for manufacturers.
The General Court of the European Union overturned the emissions compliance levels under the new Real Driving Emissions (RDE) regulation in a verdict announced on 13 December. On the surface of it, this may look like a victory for cities wanting to be tougher on emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from passenger cars and vans.
Scrappage schemes are controversial. In a 2011 academic paper* reviewing 26 studies assessing the outcomes of 18 scrappage schemes implemented around the world in 2008-11, the authors concluded that the emission effects of the schemes were ‘modest and occur within the short term.’ They also concluded that the cost-effectiveness of such schemes ‘is often quite poor.’
Pollution is a major contributor to chronic human sickness, not just environmental damage, according to the 2017 annual report of England’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, released on 2 March 2018: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/chief-medical-officer-annual-report-2017-health-impacts-of-all-pollution-what-do-we-know. The report made 22 policy recommendations, many of which related to monitoring and ameliorating pollutant emissions.
The relevance of official fuel economy figures is still a perennial topic across the automotive industry, and one of the hardest to answer directly takes into account the human factor. Some claim that the official figures are in fact perfectly valid, if only the average driver wasn’t so lead-footed. But is there any truth in this train of thought?
The latest analysis of the EQUA Index data shows that the average daily distance driven in passenger cars is not sufficient for a vehicle’s pollution control system to warm up and become fully functional.
Diesel has had something of a rough time of it over the past 18 months. It started with the Volkswagen ‘Dieselgate’ scandal that broke in September 2015, while more recently there have been concerns over nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions and air quality in general, especially in city centres.
According to Nick Molden, CEO and founder of Emissions Analytics – a company that tests car emissions in the real world – some meet and can even beat the limits prescribed by the Euro6 emissions regulations, while others, according to Emissions Analytics’ data, emit 20 times the NOx that they should.
