We live in an increasingly self-conscious world, driven by both a desire and a requirement to achieve greater sustainability. Very real evidence demonstrates the damaging footprint we are leaving on our environment. As a result, the grip of environmental compliance is ever-tightening.
Yet, we are also driven – quite literally – by a fossil fuel-based economy. Though great strides forward are being made in the wider clean energies transition (think hydrogen power, LNG fuelling), we are still so dependent on our traditional petrol and diesel-fuelled vehicles, on the mighty internal combustion engine that is so refined and yet so fundamentally emissive. It’s perhaps little wonder then, that we have seen vehicle pollutants go up in smoke in our headlines in recent years.
The warning signs have been there for some time. Researchers are known to have been questioning the large emission differences thought to exist between vehicle test conditions and their real impact out on the road for at least the last two decades. And in 2013 the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre warned that sensors and electronic components in modern light-duty vehicles are capable of ‘detecting’ the start of an emissions test in the laboratory, based on acceleration sensors or not-driven/not-rotating wheels. This, it explained, could lead to problematic emissions testing as it may enable the use of defeat devices that activate, modulate, delay, or deactivate emissions control systems and potentially mislead (internationally or otherwise) a lab test – leaving room for interpretation and the possibility of tailored emissions performance.
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