Industry group claims Euro 7 regulations will 'ban' the combustion engine

Thursday, 3 June 2021

New European vehicle emissions regulations will effectively ban the combustion engine, says an industry lobby.

An industry lobby group based in Europe is claiming proposals for new Euro 7 emissions regulations could kill combustion engines by 2026.

“The ACEA (European Automobile Manufacturers Association) believes that the emission limit scenarios presented by the European Commission’s Consortium for Ultra-Low Vehicle Emissions (Clove), coupled with the suggested new testing conditions, would in practice result in a situation very similar to a ban of vehicles powered by an internal combustion engine, including hybrid electric vehicles,” the trade body said in December 2020, according to Autocar UK.

Clove’s proposal includes fitting future ICE vehicles with a “supercatalyst” which involves a heated electric catalyst, a pair of 1.0-litre conventional three-way catalysts, a 2.0-litre particulate filter and an ammonia slip catalyst.

Clove wants the limits for NOx, CO, particulate matter, ammonia, methane and NO2 to be the lowest in the world.

This will help transport move towards “zero-impact after-treatment” but the ACEA says this will be too large and expensive for small ICE cars as well as being difficult to integrate into current platforms.

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The supercatalyst along with a new on-board diagnostics system to monitor the engine for long-term emission compliance will also drive up prices, something some say is by design to drive buyers towards electric vehicles.

According to the ACEA: “Technical solutions designed to meet, or intended to meet, the proposed extremely low limit values for NOx, combined with very stringent limitations of NO2 and NH3 [ammonia], will be very costly and massively complicated.”

“To drive the technology requirements to this point will severely limit the possibilities for CO2 and fuel consumption reduction and have significant uncertainties on durability and operating costs over the vehicle lifetime.”

Additional criticism from the ACEA’s was directed at Clove’s attempt to slash ICE vehicles emissions in all driving scenarios, including immediately after a cold start, in stop-start traffic, under hard acceleration, driving uphill and when towing a trailer.

It says the new proposals “would mean vehicles being tested in a completely unrepresentative way that would combine all the worst cases (for example, a fully-loaded car going uphill at high altitude under low ambient temperature in an aggressive driving style)”.

Should Clove’s suggestions be taken on board for Euro 7, combustion engines will become unviable almost immediately. On one hand, that pushes European manufacturers and buyers into electric vehicles sooner, but on the other, it would push a huge amount of vehicles out of Europe and into countries like New Zealand.