Impact analysis of changes in passenger vehicle fleet composition to reduce the NO2 immissions

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents a methodology to forecast the changes of NO2 immissions due to changes in fleet composition of passenger vehicles and emission classes. Within this scope, possible changes in vehicle technologies (e.g. lower emission of diesel engines) are considered in different scenarios using the example of Munich. In line with this purpose, the traffic volumes and origin-destination data are obtained from a macroscopic traffic model, local registration statistics of vehicles are used to estimate fleet compositions. In addition, for immission modelling data on characteristic roadside structure as well as weather conditions of the investigation area are considered. For different scenarios with adapted passenger vehicle fleet compositions, the reductions of NO2 immissions levels as well as the special distribution in the road network is calculated. Additionally, the remaining length of the road network, where the legal threshold of daily average of 40 µg/m³ NO2 in Germany is exceeded, is shown for each scenario. Moreover, the contribution of the sub-fleet of commercial cars to these changes in emission is calculated. The results show that the higher share of low emission classes (e.g. Euro 6 RDE for diesel engines) lead to continues reductions of NO2 immissions. The highest decrease of NO2 immission in the main road network of Munich is calculated for use of petrol cars with emission class Euro 6 for all passenger vehicles. To achieve the goal that the predominant part of the road network is fulfilling the legal threshold for NO2 immissions, a high share of electric vehicles is needed.