JATO Dynamics, the provider of automotive intelligence, has released a pan-European study on the CO2-emission figures of new vehicles registrations in 2010. The report – A Review of CO2 Car Emissions across Europe FY2010 – shows that Portugal has claimed its position as Europe’s most “fuel conscious” country with the lowest CO2 emissions for new cars.
Portugal is the first European country to achieve average emissions below 130 g/km, according to the latest study of CO2 emissions covering 21 European markets. Germany, Sweden and Switzerland are the biggest polluters in Europe, with average emissions for new cars registered exceeding 150 g/km.
“This is not really a surprise to us”, says Gareth Hession, Vice President for Research at JATO Dynamics : “Portugal is a country where smaller cars traditionally do very well, while for example Germany and Switzerland are big car markets with a focus on motivation and image. These countries have, what’s more, relatively smoothly and rapidly survived possible consequences of the financial crisis, which means that the downsizing effect was much less prominent here. Sweden is geographically a country where the need for some larger types of cars is higher, so this position is not really remarkable either.”
5g/km The report finds that despite the ending of scrappage schemes, gradually improving vehicle sales and an increasing market for fleet vehicles, CO2 emissions continue to fall across the region. Between 2009 and 2010 Europe dropped by 5 g/km, which is greater than that achieved in the three years from 2003 to 2006. Manufacturers appear to have made significant improvements, with more than 60% of all new cars sold having emissions of 140 g/km or less, compared to only 23% in 2003. “It’s quite clear that the B2B-market is important here, because more and more international fleets have integrated a prominent CSR-strategy wherein sustainability is key. I believe that you can say that fleets are still more motivated and more robust than the retail business to achieve and respect clear CO2 targets.” All of Europe’s top 20 brands improved their emissions in 2010 compared to 2009, with Fiat recording the lowest average emissions, down 4.7 g/km to 123.1 g/km. Toyota closed the gap to finish second with average CO2 emissions of 128.2 g/km, down from 130.1 g/km in 2009. Volvo is the most improved brand in the top twenty with emissions of 157.5 g/km, largely due to the introduction of its “DRIVe” versions on many of its models.
Achievable CO2 target Gareth Hession, Vice President for Research at JATO Dynamics comments: “This is an impressive performance which may have been helped in part by tough economic conditions. This has encouraged consumers to seek smaller and cheaper vehicles which typically produce less CO2. Also manufacturers have made significant improvements and it will be fascinating to see how they respond to the law of diminishing returns as emerging ‘high efficiency’ technology becomes more mainstream over the next five years and as further improvements via technology evolution will become more difficult and more expensive.” Nevertheless Gareth Hession believes that the overall CO2-emission target of 130 g/km for all new cars in Europe, as defined by the EU, will be achieved and declares that it would be good to be even more ambitious in terms of the CO2-emission figures. He also is convinced that in the near future pollutants like NOx will be taken into the ecological equation for car manufacturers and automotive taxation policies.
In the document attached you can discover the degree of improvement of the average CO2 emissions for each country. | 28/03/2011 | Steven Schoefs
|
Download full article in PDF
Registration 
