Why car makers are so frustrated with Euro 7

The European Commission has instead proposed (it’s yet to be ratified) bringing diesels to the same level, which it claims will reduce the regulatory burden on car makers by working to the same tailpipe limits.

NOx emissions for diesels come down from 80mg/km to 60mg/km. The petrol-only tailpipe emissions - hydrocarbons and non-methane hydrocarbons – stay the same.

Carbon monoxide levels meanwhile are set at 500mg/km, which is half the current figure for petrol cars and the same for diesels.

Sounds doable, right? One problem is the harmonisation for vans. Under Euro 6, so-called N1 vans (with a mass under 3500kg) were split into three weight categories, with the heaviest allowed to emit more. Under the Euro 7 proposals, cars and light vans are essentially the same, with a small leeway for vans with a power-to-mass ratio of less than 47bhp per tonne (on the assumption that lower-powered vans have to work harder).

“The harmonisation of the legislation for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles means that light commercial vehicles are doubly affected by the tightening of legislation,” the German automotive lobby association the VDA said in a statement. “The target limits are on the edge of what is technologically feasible." 

Then there’s the emissions budget, which gives a maximum output for all these pollutants in a 10km (6.2-mile) trip. Ever since the Real Driving Emissions (RDE) element was introduced in 2017 in the aftermath of Dieselgate, vehicles have had to prove their emissions not just in a laboratory but on the road too. This forced car makers to toughen up their NOx compliance in particular. 

The 10km loop shouldn’t be difficult in theory, because the limit is the per-kilometer figure for pollutants tenfold, but this has to include cold starts and be repeatable over the course of the life of the car, given as eight years or 160,000km, up from five years and 100,000km now. There’s also an additional lifetime up to 200,000km or 10 years, where they can bust the limits by 20%.

So there's an increased longevity window in which the car should be Euro 7-compliant, which shouldn’t be a problem for car makers, and no one so far has specifically complained about that.

But the ACEA and its president, BMW CEO Oliver Zipse, did get cross about the fact Euro 7 “focuses on extreme driving conditions that have hardly any real-life relevance.” This is in reference to the test conditions. For example, the ambient temperature has changed from 0-30deg C to 0-35deg C, while the “extended” conditions drops from -7deg C to -10deg C and rises to 45deg C. Emissions are allowed to rise in these extended periods by a factor of 1.6.

This is tough but likely achievable with minimal tweaks to existing emissions-control systems.

One possible explanation for the anger is that car makers half expected to be let off Euro 7 altogether, given the shift to electric and the European Parliament’s recent ratification of the proposed ICE ban in 2035. 

“From an industry perspective, we don’t need EU7, as it will be drawing resources we should be spending on electrification,” Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said at the recent Paris motor show. "Why use scarce resources for something for a short period of time?”

Ford, the only major car maker to publicly decry the new regulations, was similarly cross. “We should not be diverting resources to yesterday’s technology and invest in zero-emission instead,” Ford’s European head of its Model E electric division, Martin Sander, said in a statement.