Corporate average fuel consumption evaluation and non-compliance disaggregation based on real-world data

Abstract

A widening gap between official and real-world fuel consumption of passenger cars has been reported worldwide. However, previous policy evaluation has not adequately incorporated real-world performance. To comprehensively evaluate China’s Corporate Average Fuel Consumption (CAFC) policy, we update the fuel consumption gap with millions of consumer-reported records and calculate CAFC and evaluate the national average fuel consumption (NAFC) under four scenarios. The results show that China’s fuel consumption gap has reached 37%. The average CAFC decreases from 6.72 L/100 km in 2016 to 5.91 L/100 km in 2020, far slower than the rated performance. The real-world NAFC non-compliance is disaggregated into on-road discrepancy (2.5 L/100 km), new-energy discounts (0.4 L/100 km), lightweight impacts (0.3 L/100 km), and additional technology improvements (0.8 L/100 km). This study can improve the state-of-the-art understanding of the real-world fuel consumption of passenger cars in China, thus calling for a more real-world-featured regulation system.