Opel, the parent company of Vauxhall, is taking the next steps to help meet targets set by the upcoming Real Driving Emissions legislation that will come into effect in 2017.
From mid-2016, the firm will publish fuel consumption figures recorded under the “Worldwide Harmonised Light Duty Vehicles Test Procedure” (WLTP), which will replace the “New European Driving Cycle” (NEDC) starting with the Vauxhall Astra. These figures aim to more accurately reflect everyday driving conditions, as well as detail official fuel consumption and CO2 emission figures.
In addition, diesel engineers have already started working on SCR (Selective Catalytic Reduction) technology, to help reduce NOx (nitrous oxide) emission figures.
Following on from the recent Volkswagen emissions scandal in which nine popular models have been recently announced as affected here in the UK, Opel is keen to showcase its transparency with retail buyers and company car drivers about its car CO2 emissions.
Opel Group CEO Dr. Karl-Thomas Neumann has said “Our analyses in recent months show that we have no devices that tell us if our vehicles are in a test cycle or not. Nevertheless, we believe that we are capable of further improving the effectiveness of reduction of oxides of nitrogen emissions from our Euro 6 diesels with SCR technology. We will use SCR as the mainstream system for Euro 6 diesel going forward as we continue to develop improved technologies to explore higher efficiencies.”
The SCR improvements are expected to be implemented in production cars by summer 2016, and as part of this will include a voluntary customer satisfaction field action involving 43,000 cars currently on the road in Europe; the Zafira Tourer, the Insignia, and the Cascada will be calibrated once it’s available.
