Is that 160 g/km based on rated (not real-world) fuel economy? It translates into 34 mpg gasoline or 39 mpg diesel. The 2012 target is pretty ambitious -- 46 and 53 mpg, respectively.

Not very impressive, considering the average new car MPG in the US is 35 mpg by European fuel economy standards, with an average weight of 1,616 kg -- 242 kg more than the average European car.

...this "achivement" is due to the Diesel engine.
In a number of European countries, the wide offer of Diesel engine boosted the sell of larger cars and trucks.
Nowadays, Diesel cars in average emitt more CO2 than patrol fueld cars and trucks in states like Germany and Austria.
I sent some of the official statistics to GCC but they would not take notice. It would damage the Diesel cause.
Maybe, if Diesel and partol were taxed equaly, the matter would look differently.
Some people claim, that European auto industry needs the big Diesel-SUV in the portfolio. I think only the share holder needs them, since SUVs like the VW/Audi/Porsche Touareg, Q7, Cayenneare produced in the former communistic Slovakia. The big German motor press even found out, that a Lexus 400h is more fuel efficient, powerful and cleaner (less CO2) than his German commpetitors with Diesel engines.

What will it take to get the CO2 down, even higher taxes ?

Cap consumption. Let the market set the price for consumption over the cap.

Before you raise taxes or cap consumption you have to give me (consumer Joe) a viable alternative.

There's a huge spread between average consumption levels and most efficient practices. Any regime which instituted gradual cap reductions over an extended period of time would easily be handled. If you want to consume more than the average allocation from a cap, then you can pay for it.

The engineers should be able to make my family four door: get 100mpg, with all the creature comforts that I have become accustomed to, at a reasonable price. It really is not that much to ask.

And it would come around a lot quicker if the market incented it properly with a capping mechanism.

Note that the EU has tightened crash safety regs - e.g. wrt to pedestrians - since ACEA made its voluntary commitment in 1998 to reduce fleet average CO2 emissions by 25% by MY2008. That worked out to 140gCO2/km averaged across all new vehicles sold by all ACEA members in the entire EU, i.e. *not* on a per-manufacturer or per-brand basis.

The umbrella organisation claims the additional safety gear equates to ~13gCO2/km, so the standard it wants to be judged by is really 153gCO2/km, which it's going to miss by just a few percent. Needless to say, the EU Comission doesn't quite see it that way. Negotiations regarding how the averages for the upcoming binding limits will be computed are ongoing, with the industry arguing that any binding rules for MY2012 need to be set in stone as soon as possible because of the lead times inherent in vehicle manufacturing.

ACEA also claims that a jump from ~160gCO2/km to just 120-130gCO2/km in four years would cause massive financial losses and consequently, redundancies. However, keep in mind that it's been an open secret for well over a decade that the EU wants to get down to those levels and then lower still.

@michel -

average CO2 emissions from diesels are now greater than those from petrol cars. However, this hides the fact that most of the large vehicles in the European LDV fleet are now diesels, so you're really comparing apples and oranges. For any given model in petrol and diesel variants with roughly comparable torque and power characteristics, the diesel will be the more frugal in terms of L/100km or the corresponding CO2 emissions. The difference does narrow substantially when you factor in the higher density of diesel fuel, especially if both engine options are turbocharged.

Nevertheless, not having to throttle the intake in part load still gives a DPF-equipeed diesel an advantage in terms of CO2 emissions, at the expensive of higher NOx. Only with advanced combustion systems, such as HCCI or spray-guided GDI plus lean NOx trap is a petrol engine as good or better than a comparable diesel in terms of fuel economy per *kg* of dino juice.

Of course, you buy fuel by volume and in Europe, diesel is taxed less heavily than petrol for historical reasons. In other words, in terms of fuel cost per km, diesel is still king. In terms of total cost of ownership, that is true only of large vehicles and those smaller ones that are driven at least 15,000-20,000km a year.

The EU finance ministers are working toward reducing the difference in tax rates, mostly to claw back revenue lost as consumers switch to diesels. However, decisions in this area still require unanimity of 27 member states so progress is slow.

@ Jack -

"Not very impressive, considering the average new car MPG in the US is 35 mpg by European standards [...]"

I wasn't aware anyone was certifying US-spec vehicles using the NEDC or conversely, Euro-spec vehicles using EPA and CARB test procedures. What is the basis for your assertion?

I wasn't aware anyone was certifying US-spec vehicles using the NEDC or conversely, Euro-spec vehicles using EPA and CARB test procedures. What is the basis for your assertion?

The sales-weighted average MPG for US cars was 28.9 mpg.

I went to vcacarfueldata to get combined fuel economy numbers for 5 sample vehicles (ones which are sold in both markets with the same engine/transmission configuration):
Prius
Civic
GS 450h
LS 600h
RX-8

Then I took that data and compared it with current EPA numbers and got an average ratio (1.22).

But now that you bring it up, I made a dumb error in that the sales-weighted fuel economy numbers are obviously using old EPA standards and I was using the revised EPA numbers. Now that I've used old EPA numbers, the average ratio comes down to 1.08, which would put the US car average at 31.3 mpg, not 35.4 mpg as I claimed earlier.

Still pretty close to the Europe gasoline number (34 mpg) considering US cars are over 500 lbs heavier on average.

@ Michel -

the graph at the link you provide does indeed show that the average CO2 emissions of diesel cars have been getting slightly worse since 2001, whereas the average for petrol-powered cars keeps getting better.

I'm not sure how good your German is, but the text explains that these trends are due to the fact that diesels dominate the market for large, heavy sedans and SUVs in Europe. Such vehicles do, of course emit more than small ones do. This confirms my point about comparing apples and oranges.

To really get aggregate CO2 emissions down, you would have to sharply reduce or eliminate the tax breaks corporations get when they buy or lease luxury vehicles for senior staff. Government and EU agencies enjoy similar perks and, those in charge are loath to give them up.

In addition, you'd have to make diesel fuel more expensive. Petrol engines are gaining market share once again as they become more sophisticated and frugal, but none of that matters as long as there is strong demand for big, expensive, fuel-guzzling models.

And therein lies the rub: German manufacturers in particular make much of their profit worldwide on exactly such models. No profit, less tax revenue, fewer employment opportunities, fewer votes for politicians. Turkeys have a hard time voting for Christmas, though to their credit, European pols are at least trying to strike a balance. We'll see what comes of it.

I'm not sure members of the US Congress won't just roll over and play dead on CAFE reform - never mind fuel taxes - to once again appease the almighty God of campaign contributions. Fingers firmly crossed that they finally develop a backbone.

Moreover, I don't believe your sales weighted average for US cars includes pick-ups and truck-based SUVs, which represent a large share of LDVs sold there. Those categories are not broken out in European statistics, so you end up comparing apples and oranges.

Well, they kept using the term "car" in the article, so I assumed it meant "passenger car," which is exclusive of light SUVs, trucks, vans, and wagons (in US statistics).

I'm trying to make sense of whether the European numbers refer strictly to passenger cars or not.

This says that the EU25 had 15.4 million passenger car registrations in 2006:
http://www.acea.be/files/KEY%20FIGURES%202006.pdf

That's the same number as in this database under "Passenger Cars":
http://www.acea.be/files/NewReg-2006-byCountry(New%20M.xls

By contrast, there were 2.0 million LCV and LBC registrations that year.

Then you look at this:
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/co2/pdf/com_2006_463_en.pdf

and they say the "Average new car fleet CO2 emissions in the EU25 in 2004" is 14.5 million, then go on to give the data set used in this blog post and article it refers to.

So I have a sense that the CO2 numbers for Europe are excluding vehicles which aren't "passenger cars" (per US terminology).

Perhaps you could help clarify that.

@Jack -

in Euroland, vehicles are classified as follows:

M is for passenger vehicles
---------------------------
M1 up to 8 passengers + driver, no weight limit
M2 more than 8 passengers + driver, GVM up to 5000kg
M3 more than 8 passengers + driver, GVM over 5000kg

N is for cargo vehicles
-----------------------
N1 GVM up to 3500kg
N2 GVM between 3500 and 12000kg
N3 GVM over 12000kg

A pick-up truck would likely be classified as N1, even if purchased by a private individual for his personal use. They are very rare in Europe, though, and king cabs virtually unheard of. The roads are simply too narrow and parking slots too small to comfortably accommodate such vehicles here. On the other hand, a Citroen Berlingo and its ilk probably also falls into the N1 category. These vehicles are virtually unknown in the US but among the most fuel-efficient on the European market.

***

The term "passenger car" generally refers to M1 vehicles up to 3500kg GVM (cp. 7700lbs GVWR). For historical reasons, some countries include an estimate of driver weight in this and others don't. M1 models above this weight are extremely rare because you'd need a bus driver's license to operate them, in which case an M2 or M3 vehicle makes more sense. Ergo, the European definition of "passenger car" includes all SUVs and CUVs. The ACEA number of ~15.8 million new registrations refers to CY2006 passenger cars for the EU27+EFTA.

The EU Commission is notoriously slow in collating new vehicle registration and related data. The report you refer to bases its numbers on vehicles sold in the EU15 (Western Europe) in CY2004, divided by umbrella organization: ACEA, JAMA (Japanese imports) and KAMA (Korean imports). The Asian manufacturers command about 20% market share, those from the rest of the world are negligible in this context. Note that GM Europe and Ford Europe are both ACEA members, so they are considered European rather than US manufacturers.

Ergo, the EU data is two years older and limited to fewer countries. I'm not at all surprised at the 900,000 unit difference that had you scratching your head. Both data sets refer to "passenger cars", though, as defined above.

I had used ACEA's 2006 average of ~160gCO2/km and ~50% diesel share as representative of all vehicle registrations in the EU27+EFTA. If you really want to nitpick, the true numbers need to account for the Asian imports as well. However, as they have sharply ramped up their diesel offerings in recent years, the gap has anyhow become quite narrow. Do the math an you'll probably end up at around ~161gCO2/km and ~47% diesels or some such.

Considering the uncertainty associated with the conversion between US and EU drive cycles that we're attempting, this difference is statistical noise. Ergo, let's stick with the result of 32.4 MPG gasoline equivalent for Euro-spec passenger cars used for personal transportation.

***

In the US definition, "passenger car" covers all vehicles based on a monocoque chassis, for which each manufacturer currently has to meet a sales-weighted minimum of 27.5MPG of gasoline equivalent, with (abstruse) favoritism applied to flex-fuel vehicles that *can* run on E85. This category includes so-called CUVs.

All vehicles below 8500lbs GWVR that are based on a ladder chassis are considered light trucks. This includes includes all true SUVs and pick-up trucks. For this category, the sales-weighted MPG minimum is currently just 20.7 but will rise a little in coming years. Again, the E85 loophole severely distorts the statistics in the manufacturers' favor, which is why they have been building millions of FFV trucks in the past few years.

Helpfully, the NHTSA actually compiles and publishes all this data (see URL below, page 5). For CY2006, total sales-weighted average for passengers cars was indeed the 28.9MPG you quoted above. However, for light duty trucks, the corresponding number was just 22.2MPG. The sales-weighted average fuel economy of all PCs and LDTs taken together was 26.4MPG.

http://dmses.dot.gov/docimages/pdf102/480389_web.pdf

***

The differences in how European and US statistics are compiled make a direct comparison difficult. In the US, many pick-ups are regularly used as light commercial vehicles. Many others are used primarily for personal transportation and for hauling leisure craft and/or hunting trophies. The same distinction must be made of truck-based SUVs, though the proportion used commercially is probably lower.

That 26.4 grand average implies that the US LDV market in 2006 was composed of 63% passenger cars and 37% LDTs. Let's be charitable and assume that 1/3 of all light duty trucks (incl. SUV) are actually used commercially and exclude them from the calculation. You then arrive at an average fuel economy for personal-use vehicles of

MPG_US_PU = (0.63 * 28.9 + 0.67*0.37 * 22.2)/(0.63 + 0.67*0.37) = 27.0

Now, compare that 27.0 to the MPG figure of 32.4 that I had computed for Euro-spec passenger cars in my earlier post: because we're now including only personal-use trucks in both cases, the Euro-spec fleet comes in at fully 20% better fuel economy than the US-spec fleet does. If you were to dig deeper to reverse the distortion caused by the E85 loophole, I expect the discrepancy would be more like 23-25%.

Note that the higher density of diesel fuel has been taken into account in both sets of numbers. Therefore, the discrepancy really does reflect US consumer preference for larger, heavier vehicles with softer tires, more powerful high-displacement engines and less efficient transmissions.

@Jack -

why are there no global standards for this? Historical accident + boneheaded politicians + bureaucratic fiefs + protectionism by stealth. Same story all over the world.

IMHO, the only technical standards organization that has ever managed to get things done both quickly and well is the IETF, which manages the Internet RFC (request for comments) process. Anyone can make a proposal or join a working group, docs are publicly accessible at no cost and you need at least two independent implementations before it can become a formal standard. No industry forums, no government interference, just a bunch of competent engineers tired of wasting a lot of time on getting incompatible widgets to play nice.