What are real driving emissions?

Policymakers world over are working towards transition to cleaner transport and are moving away from fossil fuels. To reduce automotive pollutants, countries have implemented stricter emission standards. One such set of norms are Real Driving Emissions. It ensures that cars deliver low emissions in real world driving conditions.

The real driving emission regulation measures pollutants such as NOx emitted from a car in a real-world driving scenario as opposed to a laboratory. Testing in labs has led to a lot of discrepancies in emission values when compared to a real world scenario. This prompted the policymakers to develop a testing mechanism that measures pollutants in real driving.

Based on the data collected, policymakers ensure that pollutants are not emitted beyond the specified limits. Europe was the first region in the world to introduce such norms.

In the Europe experience, real drive emissions standard regulation has led to greater pollutant compliance levels by carmakers. Many other countries have also adopted the European model.

India set the ball rolling for one of the biggest emission reforms in April 2020 with the implementation of BS-VI norms. The second phase of the regulation, which is the real driving emissions, will be implemented from April 2023. However, adoption could be challenging as India’s roads, weather, geographies and temperatures are completely different from Europe. In comparison, testing protocols in labs are reproduced scenarios and have no external influence.

Once the RDE norms kick-in next year, automakers also expect diesel engine vehicle costs to go up. When BS-VI first phase norms were introduced in April 2020, many carmakers have trimmed diesel models from their portfolio. And with the implementation of RDE norms, emission targets for automakers could be a lot harder to scale than before.

For instance, all diesel vehicles have to be fitted with selective catalytic reduction (SCR) systems, which includes additional costs for carmakers and in fact many smaller cars may not even be able to accommodate it.