[Piwoslaw]

Yesterday, I found out about CARS 21 (Competitive Automotive Regulatory System for the 21st century), a high-level group under the European Committee which works on recommending changes to improve the efficiency of the automotive industry. Here is a list of meetings, where you can look through the presentations. Some of the info there is actually quite interesting, especial that of Working Group 4, for example:

• Even though emissions limits have plummeted in the last decade, air pollution has hardly dropped. This not only because of the growing number of cars, but also because the testing standards for emissions and fuel consumption do not reflect real world driving.
• It's not a secret that the "official" ECE milage (ECE is the EPA's European counterpart) of a given car is really hard to beat, European hypermilers really have to try just to get the numbers they should be getting, and only then can they proceed to beating them. Slide 15 in this presentation plots the fuel consumption of many cars - ECE tested (horizontal axis) vs real world (vertical). Not a single car of the scores tested had real world consumption below ECE, the average was ~40% over ECE
  It is suggested that a new testing procedure be implemented, one which has more tests done in different driving cycles, with different loads and outdoor temperatures, higher speeds, etc. For example, during the tests A/C should be on if the car has it (most new cars do), as should battery charging.
• It turns out that the European emissions tests do not always reflect the real impact of driving. Manufacturers tune their engines to pass the tests, not to reduce pollution for any driving style. The effect is that Euro V vehicles are no better than Euro I when it comes to urban driving (slide 9). This is especially true for diesels (slide 17) - petrol vehicles more or less meet their respective restrictions in real world driving, but from Euro 3 up real world diesel emissions have nothing in common with the norms.
  On one hand, it is possible to retrofit many vehicles, but this would add add costs and problems, while the OEMs could hardly be counted on for support since they would prefer to scrap older cars and replace them with new ones.
  So on the other hand new test procedures are needed to account for the differences between the tests and real world driving.