• To improve the cost competitiveness of battery electric trucks (BETs), provide purchase incentives between INR 10,000 and 15,000 per kWh of battery size, capped at 40% of ex-showroom cost.
• Extend the 5% interest subvention on loans for L5N and N1 vehicles to cover the purchase of BETs. This would help make the total cost of ownership of BETs attractive compared to internal combustion engine trucks and help accelerate their uptake.
• It is important to support national-level incentives for the BET market, and to do this, the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi could submit a representation to the Ministry of Heavy Industries recommending that purchase subsidies for BETs be offered in the next phase of the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME) scheme. Until then, a self-sustaining fund for incentivizing BETs within Delhi could be maintained by leveraging the existing fund from the Environmental Compensation Charge; if this is insufficient, levying a small additional fee of INR 25–50 on diesel and CNG trucks entering Delhi could be explored.
• Incentivize the deployment of DC high-power charging infrastructure to support the rapid uptake of BETs across different applications, and the upstream infrastructure assets of electric utilities should be augmented by the utilities where required. Extend concessional land rates to public high-power charging stations.

The post Support battery electric trucks in the Delhi EV Policy 2.0 appeared first on International Council on Clean Transportation.

The proposed Euro 7 regulation lacks ambition, especially for light-duty vehicles. For cars and vans, the proposal does not significantly increase the stringency of pollutant emission limits compared to Euro 6, nor does it widen the normal RDE boundary conditions. The proposal also fails to adjust the durability requirements to values representative of the useful life of vehicles in the European Union. To further strengthen the Euro 7 regulation and to bring it closer to the European Commission’s own impact assessment and its longer-term policy targets the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union should consider the improvements summarized below.

• Adjust the emission limits for light-duty vehicles to 30 mg/km for nitrogen oxides (NOx), 2 mg/km for particle mass, 400 mg/km for carbon monoxide (CO), 45 mg/km for non-methane organic gases (NMOG), and to 1.0e11 #/km for particle number.
• For cars and vans, introduce a combined methane (CH₄) + nitrous oxides (N₂O) limit of 45 mg/km and a formaldehyde (HCHO) limit of 5 mg/km.
• Limits for the voluntarily Euro 7+ level should be at least 33% below the Euro 7 emission limits.
  Increase the normal lifetime of light-duty vehicles to at least 200,000 km or 10 years and the extended lifetime to 240,000 km or 15 years.
• Increase the lifetime of heavy trucks and buses to 1.3 million km and to 560,000 km for medium trucks and buses.
• Adjust the normal RDE ambient conditions for light-duty vehicles to -7 to 35 °C and 0 to 1,600 m.
• Increase the battery durability lifetime to 10 years or 240,000 km and raise the performance retention requirement from 70% to 80% from 2030 onwards.
• Advance the introduction of the 3 mg/km brake particle emissions limit for cars and vans from 2035 to 2027.
• Specify the pollutants to be measured by the on-board emissions monitoring system based on sensor availability and define the pollutants that should be included in the monitoring as soon as sensors become available.
• Use the on-board emission monitor as an indicator for in-service conformity testing eligibility.
  Ensure that the environmental vehicle pass contains all information required for in-service verification tests.

The post How to make Euro 7 more effective: An analysis of the European Commission’s proposal for light- and heavy-duty vehicles appeared first on International Council on Clean Transportation.

Summary of recommendations for the HDV CO2 standards review

The post Recommendations for revising the modalities of Europe’s heavy-duty vehicle CO2 standards appeared first on International Council on Clean Transportation.

No es necesario retrasar la implementación de la última fase de la NOM 044 porque el diésel de bajo contenido de azufre ya se encuentra plenamente disponible en el país, como lo requiere la NOM 044. La experiencia nacional de la transición a gasolina sin plomo en los años noventa y las estrategias recientes de Brasil, Estados Unidos y otros países muestran que no solo es deseable sino factible que en 2021 todos los vehículos nuevos cuenten con las tecnologías más limpias si se afinan en los próximos meses los siguientes aspectos:

1. Paridad en los precios. El diésel de 15 ppm y el de 500 ppm de azufre tienen actualmente el mismo precio al consumidor, lo que ayudará a evitar que se opte por comprar el de baja calidad en la carga de combustible en los vehículos nuevos. Es indispensable mantener esta paridad en el futuro.

2. Cobertura geográfica de oferta de diésel limpio. Más del 80 % del diésel que se vende en todo el territorio nacional es de bajo contenido de azufre. Es deseable, ciertamente, desarrollar un plan para consolidar la distribución de diésel limpio en la región abarcada por los estados de Querétaro, Hidalgo y Aguascalientes. Sin embargo, dada la autonomía de los vehículos, esto no debe ser un problema, pues todas las estaciones de servicio de empresas privadas en esos estados, así como en todos los estados circundantes, cuentan con diésel limpio.

3. Etiquetado y aseguramiento de la calidad. Actualmente, los lineamientos de etiquetado de las bombas de despacho de combustible de la CRE establecen etiquetas muy similares para el diésel de bajo contenido de azufre y el de alto contenido, haciendo que sea difícil diferenciar entre los dos tipos de diésel. A la vez, los fabricantes tendrían que comprometerse a poner leyendas en los vehículos modelo 2019 y posteriores que instruyan al conductor a cargar solo diésel de bajo contenido de azufre. Es necesario un programa riguroso de control de calidad de los combustibles en las estaciones de servicio para realizar pruebas de verificación, y que se apliquen sanciones por incumplimiento como parte de la evaluación de la conformidad de la norma.

The post Razones para no retrasar más la implementación de la NOM 044 appeared first on International Council on Clean Transportation.

The ICCT believes that this delay is neither needed nor wise. For the following reasons, it would not benefit the Chinese economy, the auto industry, or, most importantly, public health.

• Since March 2020, auto sales have shown strong evidence of rebounding. There is sufficient time for the industry to sell the China 5 and transitional China 6-PN12 vehicle inventories and for a complete shift to the China 6 standard, including the final PN limit, on July 1, 2020.
• China 6 cars already dominate the new vehicle market and the vast majority of car manufacturers are well prepared. Any delay would simply penalize these early technology adopters and reward technology laggards. 
• The requested delay would result in extra emissions of 0.5–2.8 x 10^24 numbers, or approximately 610 tonnes of fine particles, about 440 tonnes of black carbon (a strong global warming agent), and about 310,000 tonnes of nitrogen oxides (NOx) over the lifetime of these vehicles. The total societal cost is estimated to be CNY3.1 billion, which possibly outweighs any short-term benefit to the few automakers that would take advantage of the delay.

Lastly, China is not without other alternatives. For one, India was recently successful in leapfrogging from Euro 4-equivalent BS IV to BS VI vehicle emission standards, which are roughly equivalent to Euro 6 and China 6 standards. While India is a different context and therefore not totally comparable, the only concession made was short—after the Coronavirus lockdown is lifted, car dealers will be given an extra 10 days to sell BS IV vehicles. This could be an encouraging example for China.

The post Why China should not postpone implementation of the China 6 emission standard for new cars appeared first on International Council on Clean Transportation.

• Modify the reduction targets to at least 20% in 2025 and 35% in 2030, to utilize the available cost-effective technology potential supported by the impact assessment.
• Evaluate the net economic and societal benefits of more stringent targets and explicitly consider the role of the standards in meeting long-term climate targets.
• Include engine standards in order to cover the vehicle groups that are not subject to any CO₂ regulation.
• Amend the certification procedure to ensure unequivocal identification of vocational trucks based on technical parameters.
• Redefine the mileage and payload weighting factors for the calculation of manufacturer-specific average CO₂ emissions so the compliance metric is an actual weighted average with physical meaning.
• Apply the ZLEV super-credit correction to the average CO₂ emissions of the individual subgroups in order to consider the differences in payload and mileage of the different vehicle subgroups and make the ZLEV incentive proportional to lifetime CO₂ savings of ZLEVs.
• Limit the ZLEV incentives to only the regulated vehicle classes. Vehicle groups not subject to mandatory CO₂ reductions (e.g., vocational trucks and buses) that therefore have no associated compliance cost should not be part of the ZLEV incentive.
• Develop a validation mechanism for the future 2019 baseline based on the data available to the Commission for the development of the regulatory impact assessment.
• Freeze the CO₂ certification procedure, and the weighting of the different payloads and mission profiles used in the context of the CO₂ standards until the 2022 review. Any change in methodology should be retroactively applied to the 2019 baseline and readjust the 2025 targets.
• Implement regulatory safeguards to ensure that the proposed 30% reduction target by 2030 represents a minimum ambition level and that the 2022 review does not result in a 2030 target less stringent than the ones currently proposed.
• Implement regulatory safeguards to guarantee the inclusion of trailers in the planned 2022 review.
• Make public the reference, target, and actual CO₂ emissions of each subgroup for each manufacturer, in addition to manufacturer-specific average CO₂ emissions.

The post Recommendations for the proposed heavy-duty vehicle CO2 standards in the European Union appeared first on International Council on Clean Transportation.

We suggest the following changes to the AIS 137 proposal for the RDE testing program adoption in India:

Speed definitions for urban, rural and motorway operation: We recommend reducing the speed range definitions to better reflect Indian driving conditions for RDE testing. Defining three sections with two cut points set at 30 km/h and 50 km/h, with urban driving defined as under 30 km/h and motorway driving defined as over 50 km/h, results in time and distance distributions similar to those already in place for the European RDE testing, while keeping the distance-specific emissions within the expected emissions behavior of diesel technology.

Dissemination of RDE test results: Access to RDE test results as currently proposed will be available to only those involved in testing and approval procedures who have access to the unique identification number of a PEMS testing family. We recommend that starting April 2020, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (should directly, or though one of the designated testing agencies, compile and publish the RDE results with unrestricted public access. The only data requirements needed to access the RDE test information should be manufacturer, model year, model name and variant.

Trip Evaluation: We recommend the adoption of the Total NOX emissions evaluation as presented in the EU RDE 4th regulatory package. This method provides closer results to real-driving raw emissions, while ensuring urban driving emissions are properly evaluated during testing and addressed by manufacturers.

Conformity Factor: We recommend that India adopt a conformity factor (CF) timeline that starts RDE implementation with CF= 1.43 for NOX and PN emissions in April 2023 and moves to CF= 1.0 by April 2026. Multiple manufacturers and technology suppliers are already publicly showcasing application of after-treatment systems capable of meeting conformity factor of 1 on the road.

Validity of RDE Test: With the introduction of the fourth RDE regulation in EU, the moving average window (MAW) method will become the only method for determining the validity of a RDE test. The power binning method was never fully adopted for regulatory purposes. Thus, we recommend moving directly to the MAW method and dropping the power binning method and all references to it.

In-Service Conformity regulation: We recommend adopting PEMS-based tests as part of the In-Service Conformity (ISC) regulation for passenger vehicles in India and placing the testing responsibility with the type-approval authority. Manufacturer data would still be required but only as a way to screen for potential ISC tests subjects.

The post Technical considerations for implementing a Real Driving Emissions test for passenger vehicles in India appeared first on International Council on Clean Transportation.

The VW defeat device scandal is among other things a reminder of the importance of strong in-use compliance and enforcement programs. Even though the defeat device in this case went unnoticed for several years in the United States, the regulatory agencies acted swiftly and decisively once the problem was brought to their attention. This was only possible because their compliance divisions have both strong technical teams and adequate legal authority and resources to enforce vehicle emission regulations. Governments that wish to reduce real-world vehicle emissions must allocate sufficient resources and authority to compliance and enforcement programs to improve the effectiveness of traditional efforts through adoption of more robust test cycles, effective in-use testing, and appropriate enforcement actions, including financial penalties and recall programs. The value of strong compliance programs in creating a level playing field for industry and earning consumer trust cannot be overstated.

The post Policy solutions to reduce vehicle exhaust emissions under real-world driving conditions appeared first on International Council on Clean Transportation.