New emissions testing proposal

[straightSix]

Looks like the old government are looking to introduce some more strict emissions tests...

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/in-use-emissions-of-road-vehicles-regulating-environmental-impacts/regulating-environmental-impact-of-in-use-emissions-of-road-vehicles

[83C]

I think we all knew that this would be coming at some point, especially with how blatant DPF & EGR removal (and their associated remapping) have become. One firm claiming to 'solve' DPF issues even sponsors the council flowers on a local roundabout. The amount of vehicles that must be running around with emissions gear isolated or removed would always come to the attention of the Government/DfT/DVSA sooner or later. 

[Pieman]

2 minutes ago, 83C said:

I think we all knew that this would be coming at some point, especially with how blatant DPF & EGR removal (and their associated remapping) have become. One firm claiming to 'solve' DPF issues even sponsors the council flowers on a local roundabout. The amount of vehicles that must be running around with emissions gear isolated or removed would always come to the attention of the Government/DfT/DVSA sooner or later. 

No you have to call it "delete" these days. 🙄

[danthecapriman]

Doesn’t affect me as I only run ancient cars!😄

But, I’m not surprised this has come up.

[83C]

Reading the proposals it appears to me that any new test will essentially ask vehicles to perform to the standards applicable when registered, so a Euro 4 car will not be expected to conform to Euro 6 regs, . There will have to be some leeway to account for wear and tear (as with the current emissions test standards) but the new bit will essentially be a way of measuring emissions that should be controlled if the DPF is fitted and active.

What I can also see arising from this is an increase in the cost of an MoT, which hasn't changed for many years. If test stations are going to have to fork out for more kit then it will strengthen their case to increase the test fee which is something I'm fairly sure I saw an article on the other day.

[Imhotep]

As has already been said above, this was forever going to happen eventually. Surprised it took as long as it did mind. Someone did ask a question I was interested to know though: 

Will Dieselgate cars have to perform to how they actually performed or what VW -said- they’d do? I’d assume the former but I don’t know how Dieselgate cars are detailed on the logbook regarding emissions. 

[lisbon_road]

I read some alarmist stuff about this concerning older ('classic') cars but reading the gov stuff, can see no evidence that they are part of it.

I can understand that for anyone who has had a dpf removed, this is not welcome.  For me, I may surprise some of you, but I'm generally in favour in principle.  This to my mind is all much more about cause and effect than the blanket effect of low emission zones.

But there's no detail on what is actually planned.  Let's look at this - we already do a relatively simple test on hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide.  The new ones to be considered are particulates and NOx.

I believe that there are testers out there for particulates.  I'd imagine that the test would be relatively simple so just trap the gross polluters.  

What about NOx?  My understanding is that NOx is really only produced under load, and all MOT testing isn't under load.  There's no equipment at an MOT station to place a car underload and the idea of doing so is a bit mind boggling.

If the testing isn't under load, many cars that fall into the category of 'emissions cheats' will be able to pass.  They always did pass low loads in laboratory testing.

Calling @Dave_Q for an opinion

[Imhotep]

2 minutes ago, lisbon_road said:

I read some alarmist stuff about this concerning older ('classic') cars but reading the gov stuff, can see no evidence that they are part of it.

I can understand that for anyone who has had a dpf removed, this is not welcome.  For me, I may surprise some of you, but I'm generally in favour in principle.  This to my mind is all much more about cause and effect than the blanket effect of low emission zones.

But there's no detail on what is actually planned.  Let's look at this - we already do a relatively simple test on hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide.  The new ones to be considered are particulates and NOx.

I believe that there are testers out there for particulates.  I'd imagine that the test would be relatively simple so just trap the gross polluters.  

What about NOx?  My understanding is that NOx is really only produced under load, and all MOT testing isn't under load.  There's no equipment at an MOT station to place a car underload and the idea of doing so is a bit mind boggling.

If the testing isn't under load, many cars that fall into the category of 'emissions cheats' will be able to pass.  They always did pass low loads in laboratory testing.

Calling @Dave_Q for an opinion

Particulate testers can tell if a DPF has been gutted or isn’t functional quite easily aye. My Euro 5 116d had a gutted DPF and the particulate count on it was so high the machine couldn’t read how much it was producing. This was in 2021 when I worked with MOT/emissions equipment mind.

A test for a diesel has always been quite basic. They’re just smoke tested. As long as they don’t smoke excessively and the emissions equipment doesn’t appear to be tampered with, they’ll pass. It was only a matter of time really. 

[Dave_Q]

I think the main thing to come out of this is making it an offence to tamper with emissions equipment. Anyone who has sat behind a remapped diesel or even a decat pop and bang golf in traffic must agree this is a good thing.

There's a lot of alarmist stuff going round about how your car must do EXACTLY the emissions performance it had when new. 

Main point here is that even if testing to euro 4/5/6 this isn't what the regs say, there is an allowance for in service testing rather than fixed dyno cycle, plus the service life for passenger cars under those regs is 80k KILOMETRES at eu4 and 100k km at euro 5/6. So manufacturers aren't held to in service compliance past this mileage so IMO there is no way a later owner can be retrospectively held to the original limits.

Maybe there will be an emissions test come out of it but the limits will have to be a major fudge, as we know that many cars didn't meet their stated CO2/NOx from new, and any kind of stationary MOT style test won't be over the same cycle and needs to include aging factors.

Honestly I doubt they will go ahead with the emissions testing part considering how complicated deriving limits would be, and the cost of the equipment. But maybe they will.

Either way £1000 fine for a decat is an easy win for the police when pulling over boy racing scratters.

[83C]

1 minute ago, Dave_Q said:

There's a lot of alarmist stuff going round about how your car must do EXACTLY the emissions performance it had when new. 

I think the wording is the issue, particularly the use of 'older'. 

Older cars to people who are into cars - a Ford Escort Mk.2 or Opel Monza. Older car to the Government and most people who just think of cars as a tool for getting about the place - 10 years old/above 100,000 miles on the clock. 

[Dave_Q]

I also reckon you could probably get away with eg an EGR blank as they tend to operate at specific part load conditions >> if you were doing a test on NOx that was just idling or revving when stationary you probably couldn't detect a blanked EGR. Only over a proper transient cycle.

Your DPFs will need to be fitted and working though as doing a smoke test is pretty straightforward. Maybe they need to close the loophole where if the smoke number on the VIN plate is "damaged" then it's tested to a default number.

Again though aging needs to be thought about, my van is on 215k miles so knocking on for 3x the design life (it's Euro 5) so is it any surprise it struggles to meet the 0.1 smoke limit?

[lisbon_road]

Just now, Dave_Q said:

I also reckon you could probably get away with eg an EGR blank as they tend to operate at specific part load conditions >> if you were doing a test on NOx that was just idling or revving when stationary you probably couldn't detect a blanked EGR. Only over a proper transient cycle.

Your DPFs will need to be fitted and working though as doing a smoke test is pretty straightforward. Maybe they need to close the loophole where if the smoke number on the VIN plate is "damaged" then it's tested to a default number.

Again though aging needs to be thought about, my van is on 215k miles so knocking on for 3x the design life (it's Euro 5) so is it any surprise it struggles to meet the 0.1 smoke limit?

So you're basically saying that NOx testing at MOTs isn't really an option.  But testing for gross particulate emissions should be possible.

Seems fair to me.

(I have a friend who runs an MOT garage, they really, really need a price increase never mind if they are asked to do more)

[Dave_Q]

If they want to do it, they will have to make up a limit.

Up to euro 6c (I think) everything was certified on a rolling road on a specific cycle. So MOT garages would need to follow that process and run cars on a rolling road over a 20 minute drive cycle, from cold.

They could strap PEMS kit to them and take them for a drive, it would need to be 30-40 mins of varies driving to capture a valid RDE cycle. But on this for everything but the latest euro 6d, there is no limit because they weren't designed for this.

The best compromise I can think is using the smoke test to detect missing DPFs, and some kind of basic stationary NOx test that will detect a completely disabled adblue system. Maybe reading from OBD if it's actually dosing adblue? Anything else, deriving a limit that doesn't penalise people who have a working non- modified car would be almost impossible.

[Split_Pin]

2 of my diesels have a blanked EGR and the 75 has it mapped out. Hopefully they'll be OK come MOT time!

[sierraman]

I’d heard it’ll affect Euro 5 onwards anyway so if it’s Euro 4 you’ll be alright.

[EyesWeldedShut]

Got a Euro 3 and two Euro 4s here - Happy Days.

p.s. this topic popped up earlier this year and I went off to read the consultation - they are actually proposing some new additions to the Con & Use Regs. Those are a Magistrates Court job and are enforced by Plod/DVSA etc. MOT guys will have nothing to do with it and are only mentioned in the consultation as having an exemption from the suggested additions whilst they are testing a car.

From a 'Shiter's point of view the proposal is a bit fucking dystopian - it is an absolute offence to use a car that has been ..... i.e. ignorance is no excuse. How does Joe Public know if his seventeen-previous-keepers car has been mapped, had the EGR blanked off and so on? It's not like a bald tyre where you can physically see the thing.
I'd hope that any final legislation lays a bit more of a burden of proof onto the prosecution?

As to actually collecting the evidence? @Dave_Q's outlined it above - bit of a nightmare.
Could this just be a bit of a 'greenwashing' consultation to be followed by some un-enforceable legislation?

 

[sierraman]

Where there’s a will there’s a way. 

[BorniteIdentity]

Most of it reads as, to me at least, maintain your car correctly - repair stuff when it's broken - keep things original and you're fine.

As David of Q said upthread, if it stops the Pop Pop lot and any coal rollers we might have then fine.  More than fine.

I appreciate that some sensible changes are made among the parish here regarding EGRs etc but, having read the consultation, very little of it seems unreasonable.  Perhaps I'm an outlier, it's happened before. 

However this is quite shocking:

Quote

Around two‑thirds of Euro 5 and Euro 6 diesel cars were emitting more than 3 times the level allowed.

We're already seeing the impact of ULEZ in London.  I know people have a problem with it, and also struggle to see how I can be a "cAr GUy" and also broadly support it.  But last weeks findings were quite stark

Quote

The ULEZ Effect: Over five years, nitrogen dioxide exposure for London children dropped twice as fast and twice as much as it did for children in Luton.

I don't particularly see a problem here unless you're the sort of chap who goes out of his way to break the rules.

And yeah - I know it's conflicting.  How can one be a hippy environmentalist whilst running a 45 year old car? How can one support ULEZ and then buy a car that doesn't meet the criteria? Life's often neither black nor white.  But I think anything that helps maintain good standards is probably a positive.

[sierraman]

Whilst India and China pump out as much pollution as physically possible. It’s ok, we’ll cut back to mitigate it. 🙄

[Pieman]

16 hours ago, 83C said:

Older car to the Government and most people who just think of cars as a tool for getting about the place - anything that isn't a fucking piece of shit Jaecoo or other fucking Chinese SUV.

FTFY.

(I really detest all of them, especially fucking Jaecoos.)

24 minutes ago, sierraman said:

Whilst India and China pump out as much pollution as physically possible. It’s ok, we’ll cut back to mitigate it. 🙄

To the extent they melt their glaciers and kill several hundred in thirty seconds.

[castros_bro]

29 minutes ago, sierraman said:

Whilst India and China pump out as much pollution as physically possible. It’s ok, we’ll cut back to mitigate it. 🙄

Think you'll find basic idea of this is to reduce the pollutants being consumed by humans breathing, the majority of this pollution is produced locally  ie a child on the pavement 3m from a running vehicle's exhaust but 8000 km from China. Whereas in places like Belem Brasil they run E100 then any unburnt fuel is breathed in by pedestrians so get a higher proportion of liver damage. I used to do those roadside installed gas analyses for monitoring vehicle produced pollution 

[sierraman]

6 minutes ago, castros_bro said:

Think you'll find basic idea of this is to reduce the pollutants being consumed by humans breathing, the majority of this pollution is produced locally  ie a child on the pavement 3m from a running vehicle's exhaust but 8000 km from China. Whereas in places like Belem Brasil they run E100 then any unburnt fuel is breathed in by pedestrians so get a higher proportion of liver damage. I used to do those roadside installed gas analyses for monitoring vehicle produced pollution 

How long do you plan on living? 

[bangernomics]

There is living and being alive. I would be pissed off not up, at breathing in some shite that cooked my liver.

[EightMegs]

17 minutes ago, BorniteIdentity said:

Most of it reads as, to me at least, maintain your car correctly - repair stuff when it's broken - keep things original and you're fine.

As David of Q said upthread, if it stops the Pop Pop lot and any coal rollers we might have then fine.  More than fine.

I appreciate that some sensible changes are made among the parish here regarding EGRs etc but, having read the consultation, very little of it seems unreasonable.  Perhaps I'm an outlier, it's happened before. 

However this is quite shocking:

We're already seeing the impact of ULEZ in London.  I know people have a problem with it, and also struggle to see how I can be a "cAr GUy" and also broadly support it.  But last weeks findings were quite stark

I don't particularly see a problem here unless you're the sort of chap who goes out of his way to break the rules.

And yeah - I know it's conflicting.  How can one be a hippy environmentalist whilst running a 45 year old car? How can one support ULEZ and then buy a car that doesn't meet the criteria? Life's often neither black nor white.  But I think anything that helps maintain good standards is probably a positive.

As a hippy environmentalist, my reasoning is that my J plate Toyota Carina's fuel consumption is roughly the same as a 1.5 Skoda Superb and thus the CO2 emissions are at worst about the same or probably a bit lower because a bigger share of the petrol is going out the exhaust unburnt. It's not likely to be producing any NOX given the HC emissions, and the CO emissions would've been problematic when all the cars on the road were pre-Euro I, but DEFRA have actually stopped factoring in the CO concentration when they're reporting on urban emissions because of how few pre-Euro I cars are still on the road, and the same goes for HC. If I can avoid driving somewhere, I generally do, but I can't avoid driving completely because public transport in Bournemouth is very patchy and even if I could, I'd still take the car out on spins occasionally because I like driving and I like working on them.

1 hour ago, sierraman said:

Whilst India and China pump out as much pollution as physically possible. It’s ok, we’ll cut back to mitigate it. 🙄

This used to be true, but China's emissions regs caught up to the Euro standard in 2015 and they're currently on Euro 6 while India jumped from Euro 4 to Euro 6 in 2020 bringing it in line as well. China has been reducing its dependency on fossil fuels since 2007 as it phases in renewable energy, but India is still building new coal power stations.

[castros_bro]

Maybe look at difference tween PM10  - Oh look "new" diesels no longer produce smoke - and PM2.5 with their related passage via lungs into persons AND the production of NOX.

[captain_70s]

Surprising this hasn't been a thing for ages. Even my Dolomite used to need the carb tweaked lean to get an MOT!

[kevins]

I spent several years working in an OEM emission lab, to test a car to ece emissions would need a 24 hours pre conditioning, then a 20 minute test on a facility which costs around £5million.  So clearly completely unfeasable.  If they do anything I reckon it will be from the vehicles own diagnostics and more rigid enforcement of the existing MOT tests.  The reality is more likely its a mechanism  to make it easier to prosecute gross offenders who have completely removed emissions hardware or fitted loud exhausts and those that sell or carry out the modifications. 

 

 

[sierraman]

As above it’s been muted to cover post Euro 5. It’ll be a gradual roll out as well, they were on about including a photo of the car on the test which shows you how laughable any plan will be. 

[2flags]

In my honest opinion this will be a good thing. We do need to reduce the emissions from our exhaust; we all know that. It is a good thing to breathe clean air. Those who have gone out of their way to remove DPF filters, catalytic converters and tamper with the manufacturer's settings are now going to be scrabbling for the bits to return them to standard. I know a lot of motorcyclists are up in arms as they have removed the cats, and are now, if this legislation goes through, and I see no reason why it won't, going to have to refit the cats and other emission equipment. As for the aftermarket industry, the government won't care one jot. They eradicated a sector of the driver training industry at a stroke of a pen when they removed the B+E requirement [towing licence]. I know several people who had their livelihoods decimated overnight.