The diesel crisis continues to expand. Cars produced by Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi and Mercedes-Benz have all been found to emit more NOx than was previously recorded in official testing by Emissions Analytics. They found that in real-world conditions some cars built by the four manufacturers emitted 20 times the NOx limit from their exhausts. Emissions Analytics analysed about 50 Euro-6 diesel-engined cars and 150 Euro-5 diesels on-road. 195 of the 200 cars tested had real-world NOx emissions that were significantly higher than the regulatory laboratory test. Yet all the cars tested supposedly passed EU’s official lab-based NEDC (New European Driving Cycle) test (Euro-5 and Euro-6) and at this point there is no evidence of the types of illegal activity employed by Volkswagen.
On top of the Emissions Analytics tests, Adac, the largest automobile club in Europe, has also been testing cars on-road, and it too has found that models produced by Renault, Nissan, Hyundai, Citroen, Fiat, Volvo and Jeep all emit over 10 times more NOx than the levels revealed by current EU tests.
As time goes on, more manufacturers will be shown to have fallen foul of the diesel emissions test. Toyota will be named for sure because of their D-cat system.
Had this just been one manufacturer, a recall would be realistic, but now 12 manufacturers are involved, something has to give. Will the Euro-6 and EPA tests have to be changed to be more realistic? Dumbed down so that the existing cars can pass? Or will existing diesels be granted an exclusion whilst the official testing levels remain? If the latter is the case, I suspect light-duty diesels will disappear completely because it's becoming increasingly clear that all the manufacturers are having trouble meeting the official NOx regulations.
