WORKING PAPER 2015–8 Real-world fuel consumption of popular European passenger car models Authors: Uwe Tietge, Peter Mock, Nikiforos Zacharof, Vicente Franco Date: 28 December 2015 Keywords: fuel consumption, CO2 standards, vehicle test procedures Summary Official fuel consumption values of This study compares official fuel reductions in official fuel consumption new passenger cars in Europe are consumption values measured in values. Real-world fuel consumption becoming increasingly unrepresen- laboratories with the real-world values are, however, rarely reduced to tative of real-world performance. performance of 20 popular vehicle the same extent, indicating that fuel The divergence between official and models. All models claim significant efficiency improvements measured real-world fuel consumption values improvements in fuel efficiency since during laboratory testing do not fully more than quadrupled over the last 2009, with reductions in official fuel materialize on the road. fourteen years. After EU-wide CO2 consumption values ranging from 8 to standards were introduced in 2009, 30 percent. On-road measurements, The trend toward increasingly unreal- official fuel consumption values however, indicate that eight models istic fuel consumption values can be decreased by 15 percent while made little to no improvement in traced back to the exploitation of flex- real-world figures only decreased by 2 real-world fuel efficiency. Five models ibilities in the current vehicle testing percent. This divergence undermines achieved more than a 10 percent procedure. While the Worldwide climate change mitigation efforts and reduction in real-world fuel consump- Harmonized Light Vehicles Test costs the average car owner €450 tion since 2009. Model overhauls Procedure (WLTP) will be introduced per year. are frequently followed by abrupt in the EU in 2017 and will help align official and real-world fuel consump- s 60% tion values, it will not by itself solve the problem of unrealistic fuel con- auto motor und sport (D) value 2 sumption values. Further actions are 50% Travelcard (NL) km77.com (E) needed, including in-use conformity 45% (company cars) testing of randomly selected vehicles 40% 40% (all data sources) on the road and the establishment of auto motor & sport (S) 36% (private cars) a EU-wide type-approval authority. Touring Club Schweiz (CH) 30% honestjohn.co.uk (GB) AUTO BILD (D) Introduction 20% The growing divergence between real-world fuel consumption values 8% and official laboratory measure- 10% ments of new European passenger cars undermines policies designed n = approx. 0.6 million vehicles 0% to mitigate climate change and Gap between ‘real-world’ and offiical CO 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 reduce fuel expenses for consumers. Year The latest “From Laboratory to Road” study of the International Figure 1: Divergence between real-world and manufacturers’ reported CO2 emissions for various real-world data sources, including average estimates for private cars, Council on Clean Transportation company cars, and all data sources. (ICCT) estimates real-world fuel © INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON CLEAN TRANSPORTATION, 2015 WWW.THEICCT.ORG REAL-WORLD FUEL CONSUMPTION OF POPULAR EUROPEAN PASSENGER CAR MODELS consumption values from data on 10 almost 600,000 cars from eleven data sources covering six European countries.1 The data sources include 8 -2% change since 2009 websites, records from leasing 7.9 7.8 7.8 7.8 7.8 7.8 7.8 7.7 companies, and on-road vehicle 7.3 7.3 7.1 7.2 7.2 7.2 7.2 7.2 7.1 7.0 6.9 tests. Based on this data, the study 6.9 6.8 -15% change since 2009 6.6 concludes that the divergence 6 6.2 6.0 5.8 between real-world and official 5.6 5.4 5.3 CO2 values of new cars increased from about 8 percent in 2001 to 40 4 percent in 2014 (see Figure 1). The divergence between official and real-world CO2 values is important for 2 all stakeholders: EU average: Official values • For society as a whole, the gap EU average: Estimated real-world values based on Spritmonitor.de data undermines efforts to mitigate Fuel consumption [l gasoline/100 km equivalents] 0 climate change and reduce fossil 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 fuel imports into the EU. Vehicle build year • For governments, the gap Development of average official and real-world fuel consumption values of compromises tax systems and Figure 2. new European passenger cars. incentive schemes that are based on CO values and can thus lead 2 market is presented in the graphs. to lost tax revenues and misal- by 15 percent through 2014, while The twenty models represent location of public funds. real-world values only decreased by 2 percent (see Figure 2). A closer roughly 40 percent of all passenger • For car manufacturers, the look at individual vehicle models cars registered in Germany during divergence puts those that want helps explain this trend. this time. Official fuel consump- to report realistic CO2 emission tion values were calculated as values at a competitive disadvan- gasoline consumption equivalents tage. Manufacturers reporting Performance of of the sales-weighted average CO2 unrealistic CO values may also 2 individual models values of both diesel and gasoline damage their credibility and may 3,4 Virtually all models in the European vehicles. Real-world values were erode public and regulator trust 5 market show a growing divergence based on data from Spritmonitor.de, in the industry. between on-road and official a free web service that allows users • For an average car owner, fuel consumption. Nonetheless, to track their fuel consumption by the divergence translates into while this is a systemic, industry- entering odometer readings and the increased fuel expenses of €450 wide problem, an examination of amount of fuel added during fill-ups. per year. individual models reveals that the For each model, fuel consump- divergence can vary significantly tion values of gasoline and diesel This paper focuses on the consumer between different models. variants were adjusted by the gap impacts of the growing divergence observed in Spritmonitor.de data to by presenting real-world fuel Figure 3 and 4 show the develop- arrive at an estimate of real-world consumption values for selected ment of official and real-world fuel fuel consumption. popular car models. For consumers, consumption values for twenty of real-world fuel consumption the most popular car models in values have been decreasing less Germany from 2001 to 2014.2 Each than suggested by official values. model’s share of the German new car After EU-wide CO2 standards were introduced in 2009, official fuel 2 For two of the best-selling models, the 3 The ICCT, “European Vehicle Market consumption values decreased Mini Cooper Mini (3 percent market share) Statistics,” http://eupocketbook.theicct.org/ and Fiat Punto (2 percent market share), 4 CO2 values of diesel and gasoline cars the calculation of real-world values was were converted to gasoline consumption 1 See Tietge, U. et al., “From laboratory to not possible due to insufficient data. The equivalents using a conversion factor of 1 l road: A 2015 update,” http://www.theicct. analysis thus covers 20 of the 22 best-selling gasolline/100 km ≈ 23.4 g CO2 /km. org/laboratory-road-2015-update car models. 5 See www.spritmonitor.de 2 INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON CLEAN TRANSPORTATION WORKING PAPER 2015-8 REAL-WORLD FUEL CONSUMPTION OF POPULAR EUROPEAN PASSENGER CAR MODELS Audi A3 (1.7% market share) Audi A4 (2.3% market share) 10 10 REAL-WORLD 2009 REAL-WORLD -0.6% 8 8 2009 -4.2% OFFICIAL OFFICIAL 6 6 -16.4% -21.5% Nmin = 102 Nmin = 48 Nmax = 273 Nmax = 376 4 4 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 Audi A6 (1.3% market share) BMW 3-series (2.7% market share) 10 10 2009 REAL-WORLD -3.8% REAL-WORLD OFFICIAL 8 8 2009 -0.8% OFFICIAL -20.1% 6 6 -12.5% Nmin = 30 Nmin = 89 Nmax = 189 Nmax = 590 ) 4 4 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 alents BMW 5-series (1.4% market share) Ford Fiesta (1.5% market share) 10 10 REAL-WORLD 2009 OFFICIAL +0.9% 8 8 REAL-WORLD 2009 -5.8% -17.6% 6 6 OFFICIAL -17.0% Nmin = 34 Nmin = 65 Nmax = 221 Nmax = 345 4 4 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 onsumption (l gasoline/100km equiv Ford Focus (1.9% market share) Mercedes-Benz A-Class (1.7% market share) 10 10 Fuel c REAL-WORLD 8 REAL-WORLD 2009 8 2009 +2.6% -13.8% OFFICIAL OFFICIAL 6 6 -23.6% -23.1% Nmin = 139 Nmin = 32 Nmax = 484 Nmax = 161 4 4 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 Mercedes-Benz C-Class (2.4% market share) Mercedes-Benz E-Class (1.8% market share) 10 10 2009 REAL-WORLD 2009 REAL-WORLD -3.1% -11.0% 8 8 OFFICIAL OFFICIAL -21.8% -30.0% 6 6 Nmin = 71 Nmin = 27 Nmax = 270 Nmax = 156 4 4 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 Build Year Figure 3: Official and real-world fuel consumption values of popular car models in Germany. Arrowheads mark the timing of major technical overhauls. Minimum and maximum number of Spritmonitor.de entries per year presented in the bottom-left corners. WORKING PAPER 2015-8 INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON CLEAN TRANSPORTATION 3 REAL-WORLD FUEL CONSUMPTION OF POPULAR EUROPEAN PASSENGER CAR MODELS Opel Astra (2.6% market share) Opel Corsa (2.0% market share) 10 10 REAL-WORLD 8 2009 8 +1.0% 2009 REAL-WORLD +0.3% OFFICIAL 6 -16.6% 6 -12.5% OFFICIAL Nmin = 72 Nmin = 35 Nmax = 513 Nmax = 309 4 4 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008