Remarks about Real Driving Emissions tests for passenger cars

Abstract

New test procedures for determining exhaust emission from passenger vehicles will be introduced in 2017. For several years, the European Commission has been developing new procedures, which aim is to perform tests in road conditions. The purpose is to determine the real values of emissions, which are not always reflected by the level of emissions obtained in the laboratory. Proper and accurate procedures for determining emissions in real traffic conditions (RDE – Real Driving Emission) have not yet been approved (as opposed to Heavy Duty Vehicles for which such conditions already exist), but there are proposals that are currently being analyzed by major research centers in Europe. There are many differences between those proposals such as determining road emission or research methodology related to emission measurement of hydrocarbons. The work compares the results of emissions measured in road tests using the latest legislative proposals related to passenger cars. The results are shown in relation to the used measurement method: classic method of determining exhaust emission; uses all measurement data determining the mass of harmful compounds and distance travelled during the test; method of averaging the measuring windows (MAW – moving average windows), also in the literature called EMROAD method, which determines the measurement windows (on the basis of carbon dioxide emissions from the WLTC test) and on its basis determines the road emission in RDE test; generalized method of instantaneous power (Power Binning), known in the literature as CLEAR – Classification of Emissions from Automobiles in Real driving, determines road emissions on the basis of generalized instantaneous power during the RDE test.