New regulations could hinder Europe autos recovery

The European Automobile Manufacturers Association announced last week that new car sales in Europe rose for the first time in nine months in May. But any recovery could be short-lived, as European carmakers will soon have to comply with stricter emissions test regulations that will cause even longer delays in getting units to market.

Many carmakers in Europe have struggled to maintain delivery volumes this year after the implementation of the EU's Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP), which replaced the New European Driving Cycle test in September last year, in the wake of the Volkswagen emissions testing scandal.

Car sales are now showing signs of recovery in Europe, led by a 9.1pc month-on-month increase in new car sales in Germany. But the industry is about to be hit with another round of emissions regulations, with the implementation of the new Euro 6d TEMP EVAP in-service conformity (ISC) standard, which will augment the WLTP standards from 1 September 2019.

The major differences with the new regulations over the old lie in the EVAP and ISC designations. EVAP refers to evaporative emissions, rather than traditional combustion emissions coming out of the exhaust pipe. Evaporative emissions are tested by leaving a vehicle in a sealed chamber for a certain period and measuring the evaporative emissions that come from it. Under the existing WLTP regulations that period was set at 24 hours. Under the new regulations coming into force into September it will be doubled to 48 hours. The maximum allowable emissions during the test remain unchanged.

The new regulations also include the ISC test. This states that the evaluation procedure for new vehicles must include emission tests on vehicles that are in circulation within five years or 100,000 km of their registration. This has been mandatory for all newly type-approved passenger car models from 1 January this year, and will apply to all newly registered vehicles from 1 September.

Further additions to the emissions regulations are expected in years ahead, and it is unlikely that any will result in a shortening of the vehicles' lead times, while most will add to the burdens of time and cost for carmakers. The bottlenecking of new vehicles around the emissions tests saw deliveries slow in 2019 so far, and therefore also the construction of new cars and demand for raw material like steel and aluminium. This could become a permanent feature of the European automotive market.