MOTOR

Ford’s 5.0-litre

Coyote V8 has so far

dodged the emissions

noose, unlike the FG

XR8’s engine which

bowed due to Euro IV

regulations

California Air Resources Board (and
the 16 other US states who copy the
west-coasters’ regulations), China’s
State Environmental Protection
Administration (which typically follows
in the wake of the EU) and Japan’s
Ministry of the Environment.
The squeeze was on hard. The Kyoto
Protocol of 1992 insisted the world
needed to pull its 1990-level emissions
back eight per cent by 2012, which
lead to the birth of the EU I vehicle
emissions regulation of 1993. It covered
mostly NOx and particulate emissions,
so it seemed like a mostly diesel thing at
the time, as did EU II (in 1996), 2000’s
EU III and 2005’s EU IV.
Then, with the introduction of EU
regulation number 443/2009, it all got
serious. It demanded an average CO2
figure of 130g/km for every marque by
2012/’15 (stretched out over three years
to account for model cycles). Ouch.

Not that the car companies minded

too much, especially the Big Three,

plus Volkswagen, Toyota and PSA.

New rules demanded new technologies

and new technologies were marketable.

Variable valve timing. Twin-scroll

turbos. Variable-geometry turbos.

Cylinder On Demand. Direct fuel

injection. Sodium-filled valves.

On-demand ancillaries. The list goes on.

Then came the crunch. By 2020,

the EU demanded the CO2 emissions

number be slashed to 95g/km for each

marque’s fleet average, or around

3.8L/100km on the NEDC cycle. Other

countries, like Holland, have gone even

further, demanding 80g/km by 2020.

So downsizing is a thing, confusing

alphanumeric naming structures the

world over. Three-cylinder engines are

the new industry buzzword, with BMW

even tossing one into the i8 sports car.

Audi, Ford, PSA and Volkswagen swear

by them. Fiat even boasts of its two-pot

screamer, though its real-world economy

benefits are, at least anecdotally, scant.

What our Mr Heil told us, that

we hadn’t heard about before, was

downsizing’s more potent stablemate,

downspeeding – lower revs, ever lower

revs. And he just let it slip, almost

accidentally, into a conversation in a way

California Air Resources Board (and
the 16 other US states who copy the

Not that the car companies minded

too much, especially the Big Three,

by them. Fiat even boasts of its two-pot

screamer, though its real-world economy

by MICHAEL TAYLOR

ANALYSIS: THE FUTURE OF NA

IN

DEPTH

d motorofficial f motor_mag^87

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