On the baseline evolution of automobile fuel economy in Europe

By T. Zachariadis. 2006

114 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract ‘Business as usual’ scenarios in long-term energy forecasts are crucial for scenario-based policy analyses. This article focuses on fuel economy of passenger cars and light trucks, a long-disputed issue with serious implications for worldwide energy use and CO2 emissions. The current status in Europe is explained and future developments are analysed with the aid of historical data of the last three decades from the United States and Europe. As a result of this analysis, fuel economy values are proposed for use as assumptions in baseline energy/transport scenarios in the 15 ‘old’ European Union Member States. Proposed values are given for new gasoline and diesel cars and for the years 2010, 2020 and 2030. The increasing discrepancy between vehicle fuel consumption measured under test conditions and that in the real world is also considered. One main conclusion is that the European Commission's voluntary agreement with the automobile industry should not be assumed to fully achieve its target under baseline conditions, nor should it be regarded as a major stimulus for autonomous vehicle efficiency improvements after 2010. A second conclusion is that three very recent studies enjoying authority across the EU tend to be overly optimistic as regards the technical progress for conventional and alternative vehicle propulsion technologies under ‘business as usual’ conditions.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b68f9ed2cd2ab4ca3a34fb4dfd4be3fd36c542f9

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Automotive Engineering

1. P. Haan
2. M. Mueller
3. Anja Peters
4. C. Klöckner

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. P. Haan
2. M. Mueller
3. Anja Peters
4. C. Klöckner

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. P. Haan
2. M. Mueller
3. Anja Peters
4. Roland W. Scholz
5. H. Gutscher
6. C. Klöckner
7. Theo Lieven

Citations in the corpus

• How much do incentives affect car purchase? Agent-based microsimulation of consumer choice of new cars—Part I: Model structure, simulation of bounded rationality, and model validation (2009, background): “Historic developments of energyefficiency, weight, and power of new passenger cars show that market forces often favor increases in power and weight (de Haan et al., 2009; Turrentine and Kurani, 2007; Zachariadis, 2006 ).”
• Psychological determinants of fuel consumption of purchased new cars (2011, background): “The decrease would have been greater if consumers had 8 not purchased bigger and faster cars (Zachariadis, 2006).”