Influence of driving cycles on unit emissions from passenger cars

Small samples of petrol engine or diesel cars, equipped with or without catalysts, were tested over 36 driving cycles divided into four categories – standard cycles and three sets of cycles more representative of real-world driving conditions. The tests addressed standard gaseous pollutants and fuel consumption and also less frequently measured pollutant such as CH4. In the first part of this paper we examine cold emissions in order to assess the duration of the cold start impact and the representativity of the cold ECE15 cycle. Then unit emissions are compared over the four driving cycle families. As compared to representative cycles, the standardised cycles underestimate hot emissions by almost 50% for petrol engine cars and 30% for diesel vehicles. Conversely, the results obtained for the three representative cycle families are in relatively close agreement with each other – within approximately 10%. However, the cinematic properties of the three families differ. Finally, we demonstrate that weighting all emission data equally, not taking into account the weight of each cycle in overall traffic, introduces significant biases, particularly when plotting emission vs. average speed curves.