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COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY INTO EMISSION MEASUREMENTS IN THE

AUTOMOTIVE SECTOR (EMIS)

HEARINGS

TUESDAY 19 APRIL 2016

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Hearing of the Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Ms Delilah Al-Khudhairy, Director

Mr Alois Krasenbrink, Head of the Sustainable Transport Unit

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Hearing of the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT)

Mr Vicente Franco, Senior Researcher

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IN THE CHAIR: KATHLEEN VAN BREMPT

Chair of the Committee of Inquiry into Emission

Measurements in the Automotive Sector (EMIS)

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Chair. – Good afternoon, colleagues. Since time is so precious, I would like to start off our second meeting of the Committee of Enquiry into Emission Measurements (EMIS

Committee), and its first real hearing. I hope you are all in full shape. If there are no comments with regard to the agenda we will adopt it without change. There is interpretation

into 18 languages, one of which is Danish. The meeting is web-streamed and paperless. I would like to make the following announcements: I draw your attention to the next meeting, which will be on 28 April. We have the following people invited and confirmed to come: Mr

Dirk Bosteels of the Association for Emissions Control by Catalyst and Mr Udo Lambrecht of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.

We have prepared a written questionnaire that will be sent to the Member States national authorities – the responsible ministries and type-approval authorities. We have requested them

to complete these. We will see what is possible, but we have requested the answers by 15 June, which makes it worthwhile. There will be a lot of reading work in the summer recess.

The first series of documents will be requested from the Commission, including the list of members and the minutes of several relevant expert groups. The correspondence between the Commission and car manufacturers or their associations has also been requested and we will

receive that in due course.

My last announcement is that a dedicated e-mail address will be published on the EMIS website to launch a public call for evidence.

If there are no comments on those announcements, I would like to proceed to our first point on the agenda, and the start of the first actual hearing this afternoon. I warmly welcome Mrs

Delilah Al-Khudhairy, Director of the Joint Research Centre (JRC), and Mr Alois Krasenbrink, Head of the Sustainable Transport Unit there.

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, Director of the Joint Research Centre (JRC). – First of all, thank you

for inviting me to the committee and for the opportunity to explain the role and the work of the JRC with regard to EU vehicle emissions legislation.

I would like to start by illustrating what the JRC did in order to help reduce the gaps in levels of emissions between Real Driving Emissions (RDE) and laboratory-based tests, thereby

supporting the relevant regulatory changes. I will therefore give you an outline of the JRC research on RDE and how these were communicated to the Commission’s policy DGs and

main stakeholders. In doing so, I will also highlight the technical challenges and the evidence leading to the introduction of RDE in the type approval procedure. Finally, I will try to shed some light on the role of the JRC in support of the proposed new type approval framework.

Regarding the role of the JRC in the current emissions legislation, let me first explain the role

of the JRC. As the European Commission’s science and knowledge service, the JRC carries out research, either mandated by the Commission’s policy services or on its own initiative, in order to provide independent scientific adviser support to EU policy.

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Car emissions are one area amongst many others where we provide scientific evidence. It is

crucial to see, however, that our role is usually defined by a mandate of a policy maker, either inside – or at times outside – the Commission. In the particular case of car emissions, our

mandate has not been to check conformity or to type approve vehicles entering the EU market, but rather to develop test methodologies and to test new technological options for reducing vehicle emissions and for increasing energy efficiency.

The results of our work – data, technological knowledge and so on – obtained during

measurement in our state of the art vehicle test facilities were used to provide scientific support to the relevant Commission policy services who had mandated our research, namely DG GROW, formerly Enterprise, DG CLIMA and DG Environment, particularly in order to

help the development of new EU directives regulations on limit values for polluting emissions, namely Euro 5 and 6 norms, but also targets for fuel consumption and CO2

measurement methodologies for type approval testing. Needless to say, our research is carried out using state of the art scientific methods, as much as possible in collaboration with other organisations, and they are communicated to the relevant services, also shared with

stakeholders and, finally, with the public via a peer review procedure.

The purpose of the work on RDE emission tests started in 2011 – the procedure. The main question driving the work on RDE testing was how representative the type approval tests were in comparison to what is actually emitted by the vehicles under real driving conditions. In

other words, to what extent can the type approval tests performed in the lab provide sufficient control of real driving emission levels of vehicles on the road and, if there is a gap, what

methodology can be used in order to minimise it? Answering this question on a sound, scientific basis requires significant investment in research on on-road emission measurements, notably concerning the development calibration and use of a portable emission measurement

system, otherwise better known to us all as PEMS. It should be noted that JRC had already performed a substantial amount of preliminary research on on-road emissions measurement

before the work on the development of the RDE procedure started in 2011. The JRC started vehicle emission tests with PEMS in 2004. However, at that time the focus

was not on light duty vehicles but the development of a method for in-service conformity testing of heavy duty vehicles, such as trucks and buses, on the road. Following a mandate by

the former DG Enterprise and a clear stakeholder consent to develop a regulatory in-use test procedure, the JRC put forward a cooperative research programme and developed a methodology and data analysis software for verifying the in-service conformity of heavy duty

vehicles without requiring the removal of the engine from the vehicle and testing its emissions in the lab. This methodology and software was adopted later and is now in the legislative

process for the HGV sector. At the time, the PEMS equipment was relatively new. This was the only system that was commercially available on the market. Equipment at the time was heavy, bulky and energy consuming, which did not pose a problem for heavy vehicles, such

as trucks and buses, but was certainly unsuitable for light duty vehicles.

In 2007, the JRC made the first attempts to operate PEMS on lighter vehicles as well. We started this as an exploratory research project with the main aim being to assess whether there was a gap between laboratory and on-road emissions and to develop a methodological

approach for testing passenger cars with PEMS. Twelve cars were selected randomly from a car rental company, trying to cover different sizes, types of engine, petrol and diesel, and

different emission standards 3, 4 and 5. The selection of the cars was performed on the basis of their size, engine technologies and different euro levels, irrespective of the different car brands. The results indicated that NOx emissions from the standards 3 to 5 diesel cars tested

exceeded by 47 times the emission limits over the entire test routes and up to 14 times on individual averages.

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These results, but not the individual models of cars, were communicated to the relevant

Commission policy services, former DG Enterprise and DG Environment, who called a technical workshop on 23 November 2010 with the participation of Member States and

stakeholders in order to share these results and discuss their implications for the EU vehicle emissions policy. On the basis of the discussions held at the workshop, the Commission services decided to establish a technical working group on the development of RDE test

procedures. In 2011 these test results were also published as a scientific, technical report and also in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. This ensured the rightness, peer review and

openness of our scientific research and its acceptance by the wider research community. At beginning of 2011, the Real Driving Emissions of Light-Duty Vehicles (RDE-LDV)

working group was established by the Commission services. It was composed of Member State representatives, industry, NGO experts and Commission experts from DGs Enterprise

and Environment, and the JRC. In addition to PEMS, three other methods for real world emission tests were investigated by the working group. I will name them: first, the use of the US-like multicycle test approach, which would guarantee a much higher coverage of the

engine map than the single European test cycle, but would still leave the possibility for the use of defeat devices; second, the use of a random test cycle in the laboratory, and, third, vehicle

emissions modelling. We did not follow the last one because, at least some of the time, it did not appear to be technically feasible.

In order to facilitate the regulatory choice between multicycle and PEMS, in 2011 the Commission requested a follow-up study from the JRC. Its purpose was to investigate the

technical feasibility of the different methods and to get more precise and realistic information on light-duty vehicles emissions in real traffic conditions. The research shows that on-road testing, using PEMS, which was already in use for trucks, could be a feasible option for

passenger cars too, provided that a number of technological and methodological challenges were resolved. In 2013, the JRC presented the results of this work to the RDE-LDV working

group and published its second report, focusing on the appropriateness of these various candidate procedures. Following the scientific evidence of that work and the discussions at the RDE-LDV working group, the group decided to keep PEMS as the preferred method.

In the following couple of years, the JRC also developed one of the two data evaluation

methods for statistical analysis of PEM measurements, which are currently used for calculating the RDE tester values. I have to stress that the development of the data evaluation method and its adoption by a dedicated task force of the RDE-LDV working group was

essential for checking the conformity with the emission limits and hence for the application of the RTE test procedure.

What is the expected JRC support to the new type approval framework? In its proposal for the review of the type approval framework for vehicles, the Commission has also proposed,

amongst other measures, aiming at reinforcing the independence of the national type approval authorities responsible for vehicle type approval, new provisions to ensure that vehicles

comply with the existing legislation. These consist of a peer review mechanism of technical services and the possibility to carry out directly market surveillance testing. If the proposal is approved, the JRC is expected to be the service responsible for the execution of the market

surveillance tests required by this new piece of legislation. Tests and inspections of vehicles and all of their components with a view to verifying that these conform to the applicable

standards will have to be organised on an adequate scale. Furthermore, the tests may be carried out following non-standard procedures on defeat devices.

The JRC is aware of the possibility of defeat devices, as mentioned in the pertinent legislation, where their use is explicitly prohibited. We are, however, not aware whether any

of the cars we tested in the period 2007-2010, of which significant gaps in NOx levels

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between laboratory tests and real driving conditions were identified, were or were not making

use of such devices.

I would like to end by saying in conclusion that I affirm that the JRC, as a scientific and knowledge service of the Commission, will continue to be in the front line of the work supporting EU policies for reduction of emissions from the automotive sector and will follow

and show full willingness to cooperate with the Parliament in complete transparency. We welcome you also to visit our laboratories in July.

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Chair. – We will certainly do that. We are in the middle of organising ourselves. We have another hour and a half and have two rounds. The first round will be in five-minute slots with a question lasting a maximum of one minute and an answer. The Member asking the question

will be able to interrupt the guest – in a friendly way, if I may ask that – and to ask a follow-up question, without extending the overall five-minute slot. In the second round, the slot will

be three minutes rather than five minutes. I will start with our rapporteurs and give the floor first to Mr Gerbrandy.

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Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy (ALDE). – It is good to finally start with our official hearings, and I would like to thank Director Ms Al-Khudairy for being here. I have two main questions.

Firstly, in both the 2011 and 2013 reports, the JRC found huge differences between the lab test emissions and the real emissions on the road. In the written questionnaire (answer 3A),

you emphasise that there were no concrete indications that illegal defeat strategies were used. You emphasised that specific research on this was not in the scope of JRC work, and my question is: why not? Because you were in the process of developing new tests, but you then

need to know what the weaknesses of the old test were, so my question is: why not? Did JRC ever ask the European Commission to extend the scope to defeat devices, and did the JRC

ever ask for more resources? My second question is about the time lag between the first kick-off meeting of the RDE-LDV

Working Group (great title, by the way) on 31 January 2011, which was focusing on the development of complementary test procedures, and two years later, when finally one of the

four options was chosen. Can you maybe explain why it took two full years to choose between these four options?

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – Let me answer, first, the question on why there are huge

differences between the laboratory tests and the on-road emissions. The differences are due to the differences in real driving conditions, and this is why the Commission actually requested

the JRC to initially carry out this exploratory research, because it was known that the laboratory tests do not necessarily reflect real driving conditions. This can be because of the types of routes taken, the loads, the velocity, the weather conditions and so on, so the on-road

emissions basically reflect the inadequacy of the laboratory tests to actually reflect appropriately real driving conditions. The differences were noticed not so much for petrol

cars, but more for diesel cars, as I had reported, and this is why Regulation 715/2007 has a mandate for the Commission to improve the test procedures in order to reduce the gap between laboratory and on-road. This is why we were commissioned at the time (because it

was well known that these gaps could exist) in order to look at how to improve the existing laboratory tests, by looking at the success we had with the HGV sector, to see whether we

could adapt the PEMS towards looking at light-duty vehicles and to see if that complement could help to reduce the gulf between the laboratory tests and on-road emissions.

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You asked me why the scope was not already intended to look at defeat devices in vehicles. It

has been well known since the late 1990s that there is a possibility for defeat devices in vehicles, and this is why we have the legislation. There is an article in Regulation 715/2007

that addresses this, but in order to detect defeat devices you would have to design the test procedure in a completely different way. It would not follow the type of approach that we have taken in order to see how to improve on-road emissions testing, in order to complement

existing laboratory-type tests. As I said, there was no concern or evidence at all available at the time when there was a need to look at the comparison between the tests in order to detect

such devices, because the scope was basically to help implement the mandate of the Commission with respect to improving the prevention, if you like, but always the ability to improve the control and the reduction of emissions from all types of vehicles.

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Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy (ALDE). – May I interrupt, because I totally understand that, but on the other hand we saw that the difference between the lab tests and the real emissions were

growing. Were you at the JRC not extremely curious as to why that happened? You already said that the use of cheating devices was not new. They were already being used in the 1990s. Did you ever think of extending the scope – you could do so by yourself or after asking the

European Commission? Did you ever ask to extend the scope, or did you ever ask for more resources to do this research?

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Chair. – That’s a very simple question, with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – Well, we don’t have a mandate in terms of enforcement or policing in that sense, and we never asked for that mandate from the Commission.

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Chair. – You never asked the Commission for that mandate?

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – No, because there was never a suspicion that the difference that we saw was potentially due to the presence of defeat devices. We were brand blind, if you

like, completely testing from the point of view of the validity of extending a successful PEMS to more vehicles and to complement and improve the laboratory tests.

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Chair. – I am quite sure we will come back to this. Next is Mr Zalba Bidegain.

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Pablo Zalba Bidegain (PPE). – Madam Chair, Ms Al-Khudhairy, thank you for coming here today and for your willingness to work together with us.

I should like to continue with the subject of Mr Gerbrandy’s question.

Specifically, my question is: have you found any evidence ― and I insist on that point: evidence, and not just suspicions ― of mechanisms known as cheating devices in diesel

vehicles? That is my first question. My second question: if you did find such evidence, what action did you take?

My third question concerns the differences between the tests and actual on-road emissions:

who encouraged you to analyse those differences, or who motivated you to analyse these differences? When? If it was someone linked to the Commission, under which Commissioner’s responsibility did these differences become known — differences, moreover,

that this House was already aware of, as made clear in the CARS 2020 report—?

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – As I explained earlier, there were actually two different

motivations behind the two studies that were carried out. One of them, I say again, was requested in order to assess the technical feasibility of on-road emissions with cars, and the

second motivation for the 2013 report was to look at two methodologies that were being proposed as candidate RDE procedures. One was the PEMS and the other one was the random cycle test.

I repeat again, if you look at the outcome of our two reports, if you look at the executive

summary and if you look at the conclusions, that in no way did we make any suggestion that we had suspected defeat devices in our reports. What we actually tried to explain was why we thought there might be differences and, looking at it from the point of view of increasing the

robustness of the on-road tests, and also identifying the limitations of the laboratory tests. Our scope was always looking at improving the test procedures, so that we can enhance the

prevention of any potential for defeat devices. In no way did we mention that our results suspected that they could have been due to a defeat device.

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Pablo Zalba Bidegain (PPE). – Could you answer when, and who, motivated that?

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – Motivation of the first study was by the former DG Enterprise and it was in the phases between 2004 and 2007. Our results were always discussed with the

services – not only the former DG Enterprise but also DG Environment. Not only that; they also financed the work, so they had a strong interest in following what we were doing. Hence, we obviously were in continuous contact because they had basically co-developed the

research programme with us. So it was not a matter of a particular date; it was more continuous contact that we had with them.

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Chair. – We now move to the representatives of the political groups, starting with Mr Kariņš.

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Krišjānis Kariņš (PPE). – I have one word to say: wow! According to what you are saying, and what I have read about what you have been doing, in 2004 you started having these real

world road tests. In 2007, you already realised that the NOx in diesel vehicles and light vehicles exceeded by four to seven times (not 47 times; 47 is much more than I have ever read). But we have this climate policy, which is telling us to reduce CO2. There is a move to

developing the diesel industry, encouraging, and now you are realising that in our striving to reduce CO2 emissions, the NOx is going off the scales.

But it took so many years to finally get to the Commission coming up with CARS 2020 – I think that was 2012. It was only published in 2011. My question is: were politicians saying:

‘Keep this under the lid’? Was industry saying ‘Don’t tell anyone’? Were there Commissioners and Heads of DG calling you, saying: ‘God forbid, don’t let this out’? Or is it

the case that we simply have a completely inefficient system that, when we have solid scientific evidence, it takes us five years to actually get it out of the closet because you do not want to make any mistakes? Because it seems that what you are saying is: God forbid that you

should say something which is not true, so you check and recheck, and that takes literally years. So is it politicians and industry saying: ‘Don’t let this out’? Or is it just the system that

we have in Europe that is slow, at best?

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – You know I mean you have to understand that what we were doing and that why we ended up with is going to be one of the most advanced in the world in

terms of tests and approaches here and to get you have to also recognize that when we started with plans for their heavy duty sector you started with a very big equipment which was like almost approaching 100 kilograms and that took a bar one thing or another, about 78 years of

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research in order to get to that. And then because of the enhanced mandate of the Commission

with respect to the follow-up legislation in in 2007-6 15 whereby the Commission had increased opportunity in order to enhance the test. We had to look at to see what was around

in order to in the casserole from export point of view, how to improve that testing. So what did we do we actually looked at what we already knew was a success. And then one of the challenges we had was how to adapt that to make it more palatable to light duty vehicles

which means looking up. Wait, also looking at different factors. So if you look at relatively speaking, the time it took to adapt the from their heavy duty sector for the light duty sector,

relatively speaking, it was about 4.5 years. If I take also into account commission meetings but not the Commission alone within the take a committee for motor vehicles, but also the RTE unduly Working Group, the other 3 years was really about the research adapting the and

also selecting amongst 4 methods for the analysis of the measurements there were 4. We have to go through discussions to eliminate 2 and then we have to go and test so Jesse tested one

and though that took its.

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Krišjānis Kariņš (PPE). – So, if I understand you correctly, it is not industry coming and saying ‘do not do this’ and it is not politicians saying it, but it is simply that to be sound takes

time. So would you then say that actually we, as politicians, have been overly hasty in the way we go about fighting CO2 without actually taking the time to listen to the research of

what that means for other pollutants, such as NOx? Would you say that we have simply not allowed you enough time and have run ahead of events?

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – No, I think what you can say is that we have got better and so

we are reducing the time. So we have used the experience from PEMS, where we went from eight to less than five years. We have a much deeper and extensive experience in the context of emissions testing and so on. So it does not need that much time, because of the previous

experience. We have built a wealth of experience and that is why. So, not at all.

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Seb Dance (S&D). – I would like to say thank you to Ms Al-Khudhairy for the submission of

the written answers, which has provided a much fuller analysis and explanation of the timelines than we have had to date. I am interested in what you were saying about the identification of the defeat devices and the inability to make the assumption that defeat

devices were used in the cars you have been testing, because this in my mind draws from the distinction between heavy-duty vehicles and light-duty vehicles. It says in your submission

that you used deductive reasoning and expert judgement based essentially on experience, but also on the historical analysis of what happened vis-à-vis the regulation in 2007. But in 1998, the US was fining manufacturers for defeat devices used in heavy-duty vehicles, and of course

in 2004, when you were using the PEMS on heavy-duty vehicles, you had identified the discrepancy and this had led to the RDA procedures. Why is there no link-up between what

was happening in the heavy-duty sector and the light vehicle sector? I understand the need for technology to be adapted, but surely the experience of one should lead on to the other?

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – But we did use the experience of PEMS and the heavy duty

vehicle sector as we went to the LDV sector. Maybe I will allow my colleague, Mr Krasenbrink, to explain how we went from the PEMS for trucks and so on to the technical

one.

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Alois Krasenbrink, Head of the Sustainable Transport Unit (JRC). – First of all, what we did for heavy duty trucks was in-service conformity testing. It was not a methodology to be

developed for the detection of defeat devices. So let us say that it was a completely different subject in the legislation. We then used the same equipment and similar methodologies and tried to apply this to passenger cars for, first of all, initial research ideas we had in a different

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project. We wanted to identify emission hotspots in a city. After the first testing, we realised

that there was a problem with NOx that you do not see with any other pollutant or for petrol cars in any of the pollutants that are regulated there. So we discussed this with colleagues

from DG Environment and DG Enterprise, and from there we started to develop this methodology.

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Seb Dance (S&D). – That is very helpful. So it is very clear that the experience of HDV

testing has led to the work that you did on LDV, which really begs the question: why was nobody deducing that there were defeat devices, given the fact that there were fines in the US

in 1998?

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – The question was did nobody raise the issue within JRC on defeat devices? No, because the issue had been raised, as you said, in the late 1990s but there

were perfectly good explanations when looking at the types of tests that were carried out – the NEDC type tests – for testing vehicle emissions. It is also well known that they only capture

certain types of real driving conditions. The fact that the tests that we had conducted, the PEMS testing, in order to see how we could improve and enhance those basically only went further to confirm that it was not enough to carry out such tests only in the laboratory form

and that we had to reinforce this.

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Seb Dance (S&D). – That is all very well, but it still does not answer the question that, if the fines were being issued by the US in 1998, is it not reasonable to assume that similar

procedures might be taking place in the EU? It is a long gap between 1998 and 2013 to make that deduction, which is what you were saying you did, in your submission.

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – But you have to remember that with the current legislation, the Commission does not have an enforcement or a policing mandate. This boils down to the Member States. The Member States, through the technical authorities, have the mandate to

check conformity and compliance. They have the mandate to advance penalties. This is why the Commission, since 2007 and now also with the overhaul of the type approval framework,

is actually giving us much stronger roles so that we can prevent something from ever happening again. In fact that is the reason why we could only have advanced anything like that should sufficient evidence have been available for us on the European Union market.

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Hans-Olaf Henkel (ECR). – I would like you to consider something for a moment. First of all, thank you for addressing these questions. We should be careful to maintain a distinction between questions about the difference between test and actual emissions and

questions about defeat devices. Let me come back to the defeat devices. It has already been pointed out that, as long ago as

1998, several US manufacturers had been found guilty of using this type of software and had been heavily penalised for it. I am still rather puzzled here, because those prosecutions must have come as something of a bombshell. Clearly their effect was to deter all the other

manufacturers, except Volkswagen, from using similar devices. Surely the news about this and the proceedings in relation to it in the USA cannot have passed entirely over the heads of

those in your administration? So my further question is: did you not, at any time, ask yourselves what on earth was going on?

1-025-0000 Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. - I think I have to remind you that our role is to provide science

support, and we carry out our research upon a mandate. I remind you again that the Commission basically still does not have such an enforcement or policing role in that respect, and the JRC had carried out and initiated its research always from the point of view of

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prevention, not from the point of view of assuming that there was some other sort of

explanation as to why there would be a difference between what was measured in the laboratories and any on-the-road test thereafter. We had always conducted our research from

the point of view of how to improve the emissions testing in order to reduce vehicle emissions. That was always the mandate that we had in that regard.

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Hans-Olaf Henkel (ECR). – You call yourselves a research institution. Well, I have been in

charge of 86 research institutions in Germany, and one thing that all the researchers I have met have had in common is curiosity. They were not content to confine their research strictly

within bounds set by some bureaucrat. So I cannot quite understand your attitude. Are you really a research institution or just a department of some anonymous bureaucracy?

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – No, we are a research centre of the European Commission.

Our role is to carry out research to help develop policy, implement it and evaluate its implementation. In fact, if you look at the research that we had done, basically it had that

purpose. We knew that there were certain legislative frameworks in place, and there was already with 2007 a recognition – in fact there is an article in there in terms of prevention of defeat devices – and our role has been basically how to continuously improve that legislative

package within the remit, through our laboratories, through methodologies for developing scenarios for lab tests, and also for the analysis of emissions through the PEMS. So we have

always carried this out in the context of independence, and this is why our results have always been out in the open, so they are there for everybody to see.

When you asked whether it should not have been the responsibility of the Commission and ourselves to raise the point, our results were also out there from 2011 and 2013 for all to see that potentially there was a difference that we explained was not necessarily due to defeat

devices. This information was out there for everybody across the Member States and the European Union to see. So it was not just our responsibility because, I stress again, in the

current legislative framework programme, we do not have the power to enforce and so on, but our results were open for all in order to also take action. We worked within the mandate.

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Fredrick Federley (ALDE). – The more we hear, the more questions come to my mind and

to those of my colleagues. One could be what is the protocol and routine to follow if you suspect there are anomalies?

My question regards your recent response to question 5a, where you mentioned that there are several tests able to detect emission anomalies but that they need to be complemented by a

legal evaluation to establish whether there is an unlawful application of defeat devices. Could you develop more your view on what you understand to be the scope of the ban on defeat

devices, as currently provided for in Article 5(2) of the regulation, and how this would possibly need to be amended to meet the requirements?

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Alois Krasenbrink, JRC. – What we currently have in the regulation is a definition of what

defeat devices are, and we also have half a sentence regarding under which conditions defeat devices might be allowed. We do not have assessment criteria in the regulation today, and we

do not have the obligation of car manufacturers to provide the Commission, the type-approval authorities or their services with information on which kind of defeat devices they have installed and under which conditions these defeat devices are used and not used, and why they

are used and not used under these conditions. So these elements are currently missing but are on the way.

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Fredrick Federley (ALDE). – Is there anything, in addition, that you think that we need to

do from a legislative point of view to make sure that all areas are covered to make it possible to actually act if we do detect or suspect anomalies?

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Alois Krasenbrink, JRC. – We have currently under preparation a proposal for a new type approval framework. This new type approval framework should foresee also market surveillance and in-use testing done by the Commission, so a control of products when they

are placed on the market, which is a kind of a mechanism that allows the Commission to run own testing which, up to now, is not under the mandate of the Commission, but is part of

Member States’ type approval authorities’ work. With these tests, we are relatively sure that the improved type approval framework, and work done by the type approval authorities and the technical services in the Member States has an additional control mechanism on top of

this, so that even if, for example, a defeat device might escape from one type approval authority, there is a high risk for the manufacturer that it will be detected under the second

step of the control mechanisms that we have proposed.

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Merja Kyllönen (GUE/NGL). – I would like to thank the Joint Research Centre for coming today. The Commission selects the method for analysing data from the PEMS and we have

realised that this is not enough. Is there any possibility that we should ask your permission to have help from companies which offer moveable innovations for testing normal driving

conditions in light vehicles too? Are there any political issues which are against that or anything else?

I would also like to know something about your tests. In your NOx emissions measurements, how do you see the uncertainties and what are the major uncertainties relating to PEMS? Are you developing a system to reduce measurement uncertainties and, if so, how do you do this

and what is the current percentage for the uncertainty of the portable emission measurement system for NOx? In your opinion, why do many car manufacturers seek approval for the EU

market in Luxembourg, although none of them are based there?

1-033-0000

Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – The uncertainty is in the range of 20% to 30% and perhaps, Mr Krasenbrink, you want to explain why we have this uncertainty, and also that we are doing

research in order to help reduce that uncertainty as well.

1-034-0000

Alois Krasenbrink, JRC. – There are two major differences between road testing and lab

testing. Currently, lab testing is when you do it with the New European Drive Cycle, which has a test duration of 20 minutes or so. For 20 minutes it is not a big thing to keep measurement equipment precise and stable whilst, when you have equipment on the car, you

face problems during the RDE testing, which can last for two to three hours or even longer. You can have the problem of instrument drift, where the zero point of the instrument is

moving in one direction or the other. This is something that currently is not yet under control for the systems that we have on the market. That is why we have 30% uncertainty on the PEMS equipment, which would be on top of what is measured. It is not a must and it does not

mean that it always happens, but it can happen and you cannot exclude it.

1-035-0000

Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – As for your last question on why Luxembourg, I cannot reply on behalf of the manufacturers why they choose Luxembourg for their services. Maybe there

is a scientific reason why they choose Luxembourg.

1-036-0000

Chair. – The next question is on NOx.

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12 19-04-2016

Merja Kyllönen (GUE/NGL). – In your NOx emission measurements, how do you see the

uncertainties about the PEMS, and how do you think we could make this issue better?

1-038-0000

Alois Krasenbrink, JRC. – Concerning the uncertainty of the PEMS, I explained that there

is a difference between the use of measurement equipment in a laboratory under stable conditions as opposed to mounted on a car which is moving and in a different environment as well. So this can result in uncertainties, mainly due to the drift that we have in the test

equipment. We had a talk with manufacturers and tried to understand if there is space for improvement. We received from equipment manufacturers – not car manufacturers – a

statement more or less saying that yes, something can be done, and it could be better in a couple of years.

1-039-0000

Claude Turmes (Verts/ALE). – Mrs Al-Khudhairy, looking at the organigramme I have

distributed, am I right that it is under Directorates F and A – sustainable transport, that the RDE and all this work was carried out? Am I right that you were basically not involved at all

in this work? For almost 15 years you were in Directorate G and in November you became Director of Directorate A, so in a certain way you have no direct, first-hand information on what we are discussing here. You were personally never involved in any meeting which was

basically relevant to the questions which we are discussing.

1-040-0000

Chair. – Just for your information, Mr Turmes, we ask in advance for people, but if they are not available the organisation can put forward other people, and Mr Krasenbrink is the Head

of that Department, if I am correct.

1-041-0000

Claude Turmes (Verts/ALE). – Mrs Al-Khudhairy, when were you asked to represent the

JRC here today, and who asked you to be the representative here?

1-042-0000

Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – First of all, let me explain my role. I am the Director for Policy Support Coordination. It is in my interests to know everything that happens in the JRC,

because I am responsible for helping to identify and anticipate opportunities for research in the JRC so that we develop the work programme and better address the needs of the Commission. So it is very important for me to understand basically everything that is going

on around the house.

Yes, I was in another Institute which was concerned more with other aspects. My background is that I am an engineer. I do understand engineering issues and I have been following the file since I was nominated to become Director. I have been Director since November last year. I

was nominated to be Director in September. I started following the file closely as soon as I was aware of my nomination.

The first thing I had to cope with, as soon as I came to the job, was the release of the information on the two studies, releasing the documents because we got a whole range of

requests. So my first crisis, if you like, as soon as I came in was to handle the different types of request related to our two studies. As you know, I was asked to because of the unfortunate

events that took place. The meeting date shifted, because the original date was different. My Director-General was available for that and it was confirmed. Unfortunately because of the unfortunate events everything shifted and that meant that my Director-General, who already

had other commitments with a Member State, was no longer able to attend in person. Therefore, he asked me, as his Director responsible for policy support coordination, to step in

and represent him in this regard. However, I am accompanied by Mr Krasenbrink, who is the Head of the Department which has been involved in all the early research related to PEMS

19-04-2016 13

and the vehicle test facilities that we have at the JRC, Ispra. He is accompanying me in this

capacity also to help answer your questions.

1-043-0000

Claude Turmes (Verts/ALE). – Who has been the Director of Energy and Transport in

recent years?

1-044-0000

Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. It was, and still is, Giovanni De Santi.

1-045-0000

Claude Turmes (Verts/ALE). – Are you sure that he still is?

1-046-0000

Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – To my knowledge, as of today, he still is.

1-047-0000

Claude Turmes (Verts/ALE). – My information is that Mr De Santi was removed from his position a few days ago and my information is also that Mr De Santi was available for the

meeting today and that it was a deliberate choice by Mr Šucha not to have probably one of the persons who best understands what went on over all the years present here.

I will put some questions forward but I have very little trust in having answers from somebody who has no first-hand information because here we are in an area where we need

witnesses – people who were in the meetings – so is it true is that the PEMS material which was used by the American authorities was partially, and largely, developed by the JRC? Is it

true that ICCT staff worked at the JRC at the relevant time and, in a certain sense, moved away from the JRC? When you say that there is absolutely no evidence and never, never, never anybody at the JRC suspected defeat devices, can I just read from your own report of

2013, which basically says ‘PEMS appears to be more effective in preventing the detection of emission tests by vehicles, and thus the use of defeat strategies under normal conditions of vehicle use…’

(The Chair cut off the speaker)

1-048-0000

Chair. – Mr Turmes, there is no time for an answer. Mrs Evi, could you please take the floor for your follow-up question.

1-049-0000

Eleonora Evi (EFDD). – Madam Chair, according to the answer given to question 6b,

technologies that can keep NOx emissions from diesel cars within the limits specified in Regulation 715/2007 in real-world driving conditions are already available on the market.

That is a fact. And according to the reply to question 11b on the accuracy of PEMS, it will apparently be possible in the near future to reduce the measurement uncertainty by some 10 to 15 percentage points.

In view of this, would you not agree that there are no grounds for introducing a correction

factor that allows measured emissions of 168 micrograms per kilometre until 2020 and 120 micrograms per kilometre until such time as further changes are made?

I also have a question to ask concerning the limits on the legal use of defeat devices, in connection with which the answer to question 10 shows that there are no real technical

constraints that would require exceptions to be made to the regulation. I should like to know whether there are any specific technical reasons preventing manufacturers from reporting, or at the very least not making it difficult to detect, the presence of a defeat device lawfully

installed and operating in accordance with the provisions on exceptions, mixing the files up with those governing functions that have nothing to do with emissions control, such as, for

example, audio files.

14 19-04-2016

1-050-0000

Alois Krasenbrink, JRC. – Sorry for taking so long. I had some difficulty in following the question. I will start with the last point regarding defeat devices and the methodologies used

to detect them. This is one of the major difficulties, because you would need to have access to a non-hardware piece. So it is software in the electronic control unit and the control unit that you have which manages the behaviour of your engine and the behaviour of the

after-treatment systems. This is something we do not have available and which we do not have access to. So if you want to be really, really sure that you have a defeat device and not a

strategy that is applied by the manufacturer to whatever protects the engine, you have to have access to this piece of software. Otherwise you will not be sure and can only have indications, as we had – only indications, nothing more, no proof.

1-051-0000

Eleonora Evi (EFDD). – What about the level of uncertainties for the PEMS? I read in answer 11b that it could be possible to limit the uncertainties to 10%-15%.

1-052-0000

Alois Krasenbrink, JRC. – Yes, this is what I mentioned before in the answer to a previous

question. Currently, the major part of the uncertainty of measurement and the uncertainty of PEMS equipment can be improved by, as the manufacturers say, 10% to 15%, which brings

us down from currently 30% to 15% or 20%, which needs to be taken into consideration.

1-053-0000

Eleonora Evi (EFDD). – So we can therefore say that the correction factor that we have established is still too big, even according to the uncertainties that we have today.

1-054-0000

Alois Krasenbrink, JRC. – The conformity factor does not only include the part of measurement uncertainty coming from the test equipment, but also from the test procedure as such because, under the very wide and open boundary conditions, you can have a different

severity of testing that also needs to be taken into consideration.

1-055-0000

Georg Mayer (ENF). – Thank you, Ms Al-Khudhairy, for coming here and taking our

questions. There is a point that I would like to establish: from the answers we have heard so far here in the committee, and from your written answers to our questions, my understanding is that, between 2006 and 2007, you knew of the risk of nitrogen oxide emissions higher than

those recorded in testing.

Given that you had that knowledge, and that you knew of the scandal in 1998 in the US car industry, which has been mentioned several times today, and given that we know you produced a report in 2013 indicating at that stage that higher nitrogen oxide emissions had

been found – irrespective of whether the trouble was careless calibration or inadequate checking by those responsible – the question I have is not a technical one, for I am not

technically minded and I do not pretend to be, it is simply about communication, or rather about the functioning of the hierarchy in the Commission and in your administration. Did the JRC not have a duty, or would it not have been intelligent, to take a closer look at these

emissions – which were still being measured in proportion to real-driving emissions after the scandal in the USA 15 years previously – and to examine the proportions involved, or discuss

them internally, and to explore the reason for the increased emissions in real-driving tests?

1-056-0000

Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – This is actually one of the reasons why the RDE-LDV

working group was set up. It was set up immediately when we noted the difference between the PEMS testing and the lab tests. The Commission decided to hold a workshop and after

that to set up the working group. Outside, and within, the context of that working group

19-04-2016 15

numerous meetings took place of a different nature, for drafting the requirements of PEMS for

the proposed legislative and RDE acts that are now being followed up. So there was always discussion. These working groups are open to the Member States, industry, NGOs and so on.

So the discussions relating to our findings were always in the open and always available within the context of those working group meetings, but even sub-working group meetings that were tasked with drafting the methodologies for the analysis of the PEMS measurement

data as well. So it was never an inclusive discussion, because of the establishment of the RDE-LDV working group and also through the publication of our studies. Everything was

there and discussed, particularly in the context of those working groups, and there we have Member State representatives, industry, NGOs and so on.

1-058-0000

Ivo Belet (PPE). – Chair, I will be very brief. I am still intrigued by what happened in 1998,

or the end of the 1980s, in the United States and why there was no response, including from the JRC. Nevertheless, more than 15 years later, it happened again in the United States.

Mrs Al-Khudhairy, my question is whether the American authorities had indications? Did they also have indications – as you had I suppose – about defeat devices? Did they discover

what went wrong eventually? Did the American authorities discover those irregular defeat devices or did the European manufacturer Volkswagen admit that they were there? What

precisely happened? How precisely did they discover it?

1-059-0000

Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – You are obviously aware that the discovery of defeat devices in the US was not done through the framework of the EPA. It was actually by an NGO and

then after that the EPA actually confronted Volkswagen, who basically had to admit it. So you had the framework there. You understand how that works, where companies and manufacturers in the States already have to admit their emissions control reduction strategy.

This is what we are striving for now in the upheaval of the type approval framework and the RDE – the whole package of improving and preventing something like that happening again.

We also have that upfront demonstration by the manufacturer on how they are going to control their emissions reduction. So in the US it was not actually discovered by the EPA, but it was actually brought to their attention by the NGO. It then followed that up and then

confronted Volkswagen, who then basically admitted to the fact.

1-060-0000

Miriam Dalli (S&D). – I would like to take you back to a certain question because, more than

once, you have said that the JRC had no idea that defeat devices were being used. Between 1998 and 2013 there is quite a big gap in years. In 2013, the Commission seems to be admitting that something is going on and something is not quite right. In a Commission staff

working document, dated 2013, at one point when speaking about the weaknesses of in-service conformity testing, the Commission specifically states that ‘some vehicles seem to be

designed to respect the limits only when tested on this cycle. Moreover, there is increasing evidence of illegal practices by some end users that defeat the anti-pollution systems to improve driving performance or save on the replacement of costly components’.

So there was proof back in 1998 that something was not quite right. Maybe defeat devices

was not the word being used but, if all that proof does not lead you to something illegal going on or to the use of defeat devices, then honestly I do not know what does leads you there. At one point you mentioned perfectly reasonable issues for the position that the JRC took. I am

curious to know, honestly, what these reasonable issues are, because so far I have not heard precisely what these reasonable issues are for your position. Another question vis-à-vis this is

how you can continuously improve. That is something that you are saying, namely that the JRC wants to continuously improve. How can you continuously improve if you do not even acknowledge the pitfalls or the deficiencies that actually exist?

1-062-0000

16 19-04-2016

Alois Krasenbrink, JRC. – We come back to defeat devices. As I already mentioned earlier,

but probably it has not been properly understood, there are the parts that are legal and the ones that are illegal but there is no clear definition of what is to be understood as legal and what is

to be understood as illegal. That is a point that has been realised and that is being dealt with in the new proposal because in future – at least we hope so if this this proposal goes through – car manufacturers have to provide the authorities with information of what kind of defeat

devices they have installed, what kind of systems they have installed and what is the purpose of such a system. Then at least the knowledge of what is done and not done, according to the

manufacturer, is there.

1-063-0000

Jens Gieseke (PPE). – It is rather surprising that, on the one hand, PEMS are now being proposed to us as the solution while, on the other hand, there is a 30% rate of measurement

inaccuracy. This prompts me to ask how the reliability and technical accuracy of portable emission measurement systems (PEMS) are actually assessed. According to your own

information – the information from the JRC – you use a tolerance of + 30 mg per km. Today we have heard that you assume a rate of measurement inaccuracy of 30%. In the RDE legislation, the Commission stipulates a conformity factor of 15 mg – from 30 to 15 mg. So I

find myself wondering whether the JRC’s figures have simply been ignored. Is there any explanation for this new limit-value definition – for a tolerance of 15 mg? Is it a matter of

sloppiness or have the JRC figures simply been ignored? Or has an arbitrary decision been taken here? This question bothers me somewhat.

1-064-0000

Alois Krasenbrink, JRC. – To be honest, I have difficulty in understanding where the 15

milligrams come from.

1-065-0000

Jens Gieseke (PPE). – The conformity factor figure cited by the Commission in the RDE legislation is 15 mg, whereas you proposed 30 mg.

1-066-0000

Alois Krasenbrink, JRC. – No it was not. I have not proposed anything. We have only said that we found in discussion, or in analysing the uncertainties of the measurement using

portable emission measurement systems, that the uncertainty is in the range of up to 30%, not milligrams.

1-067-0000

Ismail Ertug (S&D). – I have a question for Mr Krasenbrink. It concerns the legally

permissible shut-down of emissions control systems and the so-called temperature window. This is something I want to come back to.

Most emissions control systems shut down when the outside temperature falls below 10°. Are you aware of that?

1-068-0000

Alois Krasenbrink, JRC. – We have no concrete information as to at what temperature car manufacturers switch their systems on and off.

1-069-0000

Ismail Ertug (S&D). – Why not? If I have understood your remit correctly, you are, after all,

an institution for technical research services. Maybe you should have information about this sort of thing, especially as you are aware that the German Ministry of Transport has carried

out emissions tests that have also produced interesting results in this regard – unpublished results, but nonetheless interesting.

1-070-0000

Alois Krasenbrink, JRC. – The question is confusing me a bit because, first of all, car

manufacturers do not report to us with respect to their control strategies and – as I mentioned – at what temperature they switch on and off their systems. We have, at the same time, no

19-04-2016 17

access to information that is collected in other entities and other authorities. When you say

that this information has already been publicly available for a while, yes, we probably have not done our research correctly, but I doubt that is so.

1-071-0000

Ismail Ertug (S&D). – Assuming that this is the case and that you really have no information about it: do you think that shut-down systems of this type are actually necessary?

1-072-0000

Alois Krasenbrink, JRC. – We have discussed the issue of switching on and off specific

technologies, first in the field of engines to be used in non-road mobile machinery and in the heavy-duty sector. It is clear that, when you use an after-treatment system, you have

difficulties with temperatures, especially low temperatures. For example, using a catalyser as you do in the SCR system, means that the catalyser needs to reach a certain operation temperature before the catalyser becomes active. At lower temperatures the catalyser does not

function. If you inject the urea in the SCR system onto your catalyser, you can easily damage your catalyser and your ability will go down. This is something you do not want. Therefore at

lower temperatures it needs more time before, under similar and the same driving use conditions, your catalyser reaches the operation temperature. Therefore it takes longer and the NOx emissions are higher for a limited period of time.

1-073-0000

Ismail Ertug (S&D). – So, in a nutshell, you are still in favour of this type of temperature window.

1-074-0000

Alois Krasenbrink, JRC. – I am not for a temperature window. I only have to take into

consideration some elements of these after-treatment devices that are there and this is that the catalyser does not work when the temperature is not reached.

1-075-0000

Daniel Dalton (ECR). – I think the questions being asked of the JRC today are important,

because you are going to get significant market surveillance powers under the type approval proposal. We are effectively relying on you to stop this happening again. So with that in mind,

I have got a few questions. Do you have the resources to do the market surveillance proposed effectively? Because to me it looks like it is going to be a massive job. And do you also have the forward thinking needed to learn from the errors that we have been talking about today? I

think it is a point Mr Dance was mentioning about powers of deduction, if you like. Also, will you do this alone, or will you be using external contractors? Because it is not clear in the

proposal or my discussions with the Commission exactly how you are going to do that. And thirdly, how will you work with the national authorities? Because is there not a danger here that they may not do their market surveillance because they think you are doing it, and there is

a possibility that there is confusion between the two of you?

1-076-0000

Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – As you know we have a range of laboratories, which members

of the committee will come and see when they visit in July. So you will see the range of laboratories that we will propose in order to help us implement this enhanced capacity. We are also planning, should the proposal be approved, in order to augment them with two further

laboratories. We will also get an increased number of staff in order to do that. We will not discount that maybe – under our guidance – we might outsource, like putting the guidelines

and things like that in place. So that is likely to happen. We will go through a phase where we will start with the current laboratories and then we will start to ramp up, and so we have estimated that it will take us about 2 years in order to test a certain sample, and then after that,

in the ramping-up phase, we will increase our sample size. I think, when you listen to what our sample size is, I don’t think the national authorities will feel that we are going to replace

their role in that sense, because the scope of what we are doing will be to test the success of the conformance. So we will be working on sample sizes and in turn also obviously working

18 19-04-2016

either directly with the authorities, where we are picking up from them, but also picking up

directly from the market and not necessarily going through the authorities. So we have basically planned out, and have an understanding of, our ability to handle this in terms of

vehicles, and should it be required that we go even beyond that, then that will be the phase where we will contemplate going into perhaps outsourcing, but obviously under our guidance.

1-077-0000

Pilar Ayuso (PPE). – Madam Chair, Ms Al-Khudhairy, thank you for coming to report to us

here today.

Firstly, with regard to the reports, do you believe that the weight of the portable equipment, which is in fact extremely heavy, is influencing the results of real driving emissions tests? Would the limits be complied with without this additional weight?

Secondly, you also used old vehicles with different numbers of kilometres on the clock. Do

you think that the number of kilometres on the clock is a relevant parameter that may have had an influence on emissions?

Also with regard to the reports, you state on page 4 of the 2011 report, in relation to the Euro 6 standards, that Regulation (EC) No 715/2007 contains provisions that should guarantee

compliance with emission limits during type approval under normal conditions. These standards include a ban on defeat devices.

Why did you change your mind and state on page 31 of the 2013 report that the exceptions leave room for interpretation?

With regard to your answers, you make it clear that the best possible tests cannot prevent the use of defeat devices. In that case, what advantage is offered by tests under real conditions?

Can you guarantee better compliance with the standards by using these tests, or are we also

opening the door to other ways of failing to comply with the legislation?

1-078-0000

Alois Krasenbrink, JRC. – I will take the part from the PEMS devices. These have been

initially developed, as Delilah said before, for testing on trucks, where you have a lot of space and energy consumption is not a problem and neither is the size or weight. Indeed, it would be better and it is better to have lighter systems for passenger cars. In the days when we started

testing, we had no choice. We just had the one system. We started with the bigger cars and tried to get all the equipment installed in the car. In the end we managed to get this done. But

then, with time, and especially in the past few years, the equipment became lighter and easier to handle and there was no need for calibration gases, for example, which is safety issue. So there was an improvement in the system itself. You talked about vehicles with different

kilometres on the clock and whether this is important. Yes. It is indeed important as the more kilometres are driven with the car, the higher the risk that you capture higher emissions for the

car, but that is not a problem with defeat devices, but something broken in the car – as happened to us in one of our tests of a Volkswagen vehicle.

1-079-0000

Carlos Zorrinho (S&D). – Good afternoon. Thank you for your willingness to provide

information. Your 2013 report ‘A complementary emissions test for light-duty vehicles’ contains a text box clearly stating that, even though European standards are increasingly

restrictive and emissions measured in the laboratory are falling constantly, this has not been matched by equivalent results on the road. The report also states that the exceptions provided for in European legislation provide scope for the potential use of defeat devices to enable

vehicles to comply with strict emission standards in laboratory tests.

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Consequently, I cannot agree with you when you said just now in reply to one of my colleagues that there was no reason not to have confidence. On the contrary, there were many

reasons to suspect that something was not in order, that something was wrong. You had reasons not to be certain but the fact is that you did not suspect anything, and it is very important for this committee to understand why you did not distrust the results. It is very

important for us to understand what happened. You have already said that you did not wish to cast doubt on the results because this was not the subject of the study and you had no

mandate. You had no mandate, but you did have a duty to inform the Commission, and my question is: did you report the matter? Who did you inform and what did you report? If you provided information, why do you think your mandate was not immediately extended? Did

the person responsible not have an obligation, on receiving this information, to extend your mandate after this was stated in the report?

1-080-0000

Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – I come back to what I said earlier, and Alois had already explained potentially why we thought that there were discrepancies between the PEMS and also the lab test results. Of course our services were always informed, but so also were those

at the workshop we organised in order to release the results of the first report before it was published. That was at a workshop organised by the Commission, to which number of

stakeholders were invited, including industry and so on. But also the reason behind why we wanted to improve the testing was also why we set up the RDE-LDV Working Group. That is the whole purpose of that working group which, as I said, was an open working group. It was

open to Member States, to NGOs and to industry and so on, and in it our work was always explained, and the results of our research was always discussed in that context. So there was

always the opportunity. It was always done in an open manner in order to take it further. And this is what we did. I mean we identified the issue and this is why we have the RDE package and this is why we also have the upheaval of the type approval. The RDE package was

already in motion before that and it contains a certain number of acts, which on the one hand will help improve from the prevention point of view the availability of the control strategy,

but also help in improving the PEMS methodology as well. So together with the type approval, we should have a much stronger package in terms of prevention, like I said, but also to strengthen the understanding on reducing the differences between the lab tests and bring

them as close as possible to real driving conditions.

1-081-0000

Dita Charanzová (ALDE). – One of the roles of this committee is to investigate the processes within the Commission, more precisely whether it complied with the requirements

set in the 2007 regulation. The regulation asks the Commission to keep the test cycles under review and to adapt them if they are no longer relevant or do not adequately reflect real

driving conditions. Your reports, from both 2011 and 2013, clearly show that the current tests are no longer adequate for light-duty vehicles. Would you consider the process you have described and answer whether the Commission really did comply with these requirements, or

would you consider it as a failure? Linked to this question, I would also be interested to hear whether you consider the Commission introduced these new tests in a timely manner, as

stipulated in the 2007 regulation.

1-082-0000

Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – Procedurally I believe the Commission has complied. This is why the two tests were commissioned by the Commission services. The one on which we

reported in 2011 with our public report was commissioned earlier. It was done basically within the mandate in order to aim to reduce emissions by improving emissions testing.

Coming back to the cycle test under review, in the four acts of the RDE package, we have the annual mandate in order to review that as well. So that is taken into consideration in the four

acts of the RDE and also within the context of the new world test cycles that will be coming

20 19-04-2016

out in 2017. These are also taken into consideration there in order to improve that. So there is

actually a continuous improvement as we go along. Between the WLTC, the RDE and the upheaval of the type approval, we shall have a much stronger package in the context of

prevention, but also achieving our targets for emissions with the timelines that were given by them.

1-083-0000

Françoise Grossetête (PPE). – I would like, nonetheless, to come back to that 2013 report

which did mention the existence of defeat devices. One of our colleagues has already pointed that out, but I would like some further information because you decided, back then, that the

existence of defeat devices lay beyond the group’s remit, which was concerned with RDE testing.

I also wonder about the reliability of the tests, because you say it will take time – at least two years – for a significant sample to be tested. Are you really confident about the tests you are

going to introduce? How do they differ from the tests carried out in the USA? What is the timetable for introducing these tests, under real driving conditions, for light vehicles and for heavy vehicles?

1-084-0000

Alois Krasenbrink, JRC. – Well, we have done quite a lot of work in developing the test

procedure for real-life emissions testing of light-duty vehicles. Therefore we have a lot of trust in the product. The testing in the United States was also mentioned in another question.

The defeat device in Volkswagen vehicles was not detected in the United States during the type approval process. This must be clear. So all the test cycles that were applied in United States were not able to detect defeat devices. In our case, we have the RDE testing as a

complementary measure to test-cycle testing. Test-cycle testing is almost always predictable. So if you want to cheat then you do it on the test cycle but not on an unpredictable thing, and

the unpredictable thing is real-drive emission testing because it is done on road in wide-boundary conditions. Predicting this means you have to cover the entire performance of the engine in the engine map which means at the end the product is clean under all conditions.

Therefore, we are very confident that the new system will allow us to have all clean vehicles without defeat devices in future on the market and exclude the use of defeat or cheat devices,

as mentioned.

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Françoise Grossetête (PPE). – In reality, given what you have explained to us and given the current situation, how should we go about improving implementation and improving the

working approach with good two-way communication between the Commission and yourselves – because it would seem that information has not always been transmitted in a

timely manner.

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – First of all, we are part of the Commission.

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Françoise Grossetête (PPE). – Of course, I know very well that you are part of the

Commission, but several directorates-general are involved. Information needs to be transmitted efficiently from your research centre to the DGs concerned.

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – And they were. As I said, they financed the studies.

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Christel Schaldemose (S&D). – First, I have a question on the past. We have learned today that it is not your mandate to be suspicious, but did you make an effort then to highlight your

findings in the 2011 and 2013 reports to the Member States so that they could check why we

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saw this gap between the lab tests and the real-drive emissions? I also have a question for the

future: you talk about the need to have access to software in order to detect defeat devices. Will you get this access with the on-board diagnostic tools in the future, and can we trust that

these data are not manipulated by the car industry?

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – The first findings were before the release of the 2011 report. The Commission’s former DG Enterprise had organised the workshop in which the results

were first announced and then it was followed up, as I said, with the setting-up of the working group, which also included representatives from the Member States, industry, NGOs, and so

on. In both those types of arrangements, the meetings were always open and the invitation was not inclusive, so there was already access and awareness at that time. I think that has to be very clear. In addition, we gave a number of presentations and different public scenarios on

our results. Our results were also published in scientific publications and in technical reports that were also available on our website. At no time did we not disclose that information. That

was always open, even from the start. Your second question was about access to...?

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Alois Krasenbrink, JRC. – Access to the software that I mentioned before in the engine control unit, manipulated or not, if we receive this information, is probably not a question. If

we get the information about what is done with a piece of software, then it is relatively easy to test whether or not this has been implemented, as has been described by the manufacturer.

This also allows you then to detect with testing if the vehicle behaves as described by the manufacturer or if it behaves differently. If it behaves differently then we have a clear indication that something has not been explained by the manufacturer. So you do not care

how it is done. It is only if it is described, you just need to find out if it is as described by the manufacturer.

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Christel Schaldemose (S&D). – So if you get access to software in the future, you would be

able to detect a defeat device so that we will not be in the same situation in the future?

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Alois Krasenbrink, JRC. – Hopefully, even without access to the software. This is what I

was saying.

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Νεοκλής Συλικιώτης (GUE/NGL). – Madam President, I shall reiterate a number of points made by my colleagues. In 2013, there was obviously actual evidence, as opposed to just

indications, as suggested here, to show that devices were being used to manipulate and falsify the results. In other words, we are talking about possible fraud. Other colleagues, most recently Mr Zorrinho, have also made this point.

However you have failed to indicate in reply, Ms Al-Khudhairy, whether you informed the Commission. Whom did you inform? In our opinion, if any research centre uncovers possible

fraud at the expense of the public, it is perfectly entitled, and indeed duty-bound, to inform not only, first and foremost, the Commission but also, in my opinion, the Member States. From what you have said, we can only conclude that you failed to pass on sufficiently full and

accurate information and, above all, we still do not know whom you informed. I do not consider that expending energy in workshops is the same as providing information, which as

you so rightly said, is the responsibility of the JRC, in order to ensure that we are in a position to take appropriate preventive action.

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – So let me come back again. In the report we explained the

reasons why there was, potentially, a difference. We did not at any time warn or say that this, potentially, was related to defeat devices. Secondly – and I keep on repeating this – the work

was actually initiated together with the Commission services. At the time, this was the former DG Enterprise. It is not something that we started on our own initiative.

22 19-04-2016

Moreover, with regard to the report that you mention, which is the 2013 report, of course the Commission at the time knew about it. They are one of the co-authors. So they did not find

out through the workshop. The reason why we gave the answer on the workshop was because the lady who had asked the question asked how the Member States were also informed. This is why I made reference to that workshop, to show how open that particular workshop was.

They are co-authors of our report, they financed that work and, of course, they did not have to wait for a workshop in order to find out. The workshop was only to show that it was not

inclusive and that we had made it as open as possible to everybody. It was open, basically.

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Νεοκλής Συλικιώτης (GUE/NGL). – Did you inform the Commission of this? Did you request and did you receive any advice as to what action should be taken to remedy matters?

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – Yes, they are, as I said, co-author so they knew immediately. If they were with us then they followed that work, and the action in meetings that followed up

was setting up the RDE-LDV working group, which I reported on, which kicked off in 2011. The aim of that working group basically is to improve the testing so that we can continue to improve the process of reduction of emissions. So that was the mandate of that working

group. That working group was also an open working group. It was not a closed working group.

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Karima Delli (Verts/ALE). – Defeat devices or not, you measured the huge discrepancies

between standards and emissions on a certain number of vehicles, yet you did not send information about the makes and models concerned to the Member States. So who should

have sent that information? Who should have been alerted? Why did you not sound the alert and who should have done so? That is my first question.

My second is as follows: can you tell me whether the Director of Energy and Transport is still in post and why he was asked to resign last Thursday?

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – As I explained earlier, the information was that we had not carried out that research from the point of view of a policing in terms of it being because of a brand or a particular type of vehicle that we would pass on that information to the Member

States. The scope of the initial studies – and they were, are and have been – to improve the methodologies for testing, building on the experience of the heavy-duty vehicle and within the

mandate and the context of the Commission of the 2007 legislative package. I explained earlier that we do not have that mandate of policing in that context because it was

research in order to always improve the technologies in order to improve the limits of, especially, NOx pollution. Yes, the Member States did hear about the results because I said

the workshop was open. There were representatives there from the Member States. The RDE-LDV working group was also open. They were invited. There were representatives from there.

Regarding the issue about the brands and models, the purpose of the test was not about the

brand and the model. Actually, it was about petrol versus diesel. This is why we got our cars from a rental company because we did not want to have any inference like that. The purpose was actually to compare certain categories but not necessarily from the point of view of the

brands. I am actually sitting next to one of the Heads of Unit of the laboratory and that is Mr Krasenbrink. The question about the head of the particular institute, well he was not sacked

actually. I am not sure what sort of information you have received. The whole JRC has basically been going through a reorganisation and, as part of that reorganisation, basically senior management, and also middle management, have actually moved into new positions,

19-04-2016 23

but he still currently in place. He has not been sacked. Nobody has been sacked. Everybody

still has their jobs.

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Claude Turmes (Verts/ALE). – Is it not truly remarkable how these things work out?

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Karima Delli (Verts/ALE). – Can you tell us precisely what his duties are?

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Delilah Al-Khudhairy, JRC. – He is still in charge of his current institute and nobody has been sacked, as I said. In the Commission, we also have mobility, as you know, where senior

management... (Heckling) Pardon? No, the JRC has been planning this strategy since last year. We had an external

evaluation of our work programme and as part of that evaluation we were requested to also reflect upon our strategy, think longer-term and, as part of that strategy, one part of it was to

look at the organisation of our work. The organisation of our work also implied the management and the way the structure was. This is something we have been doing since last year.

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Chair. – No, no, Mr Turmes! If there is an issue related to our work here, and a reorganisation in the JRC, we will get to that, if there is a relationship, do not worry.

But I do not like the way this is going. In the coordinators’ meetings we had thorough discussions – sometimes hard – but we had good discussions and in the end we agreed on a

method of working. If then one political group does another thing, that makes it very difficult to work and everybody starts doing whatever they want. That is not possible. So if there is an

issue we will come back to it in the coordinators’ meeting. If you want to change the method of questioning, that is no problem. We will decide on that in the coordinators’ meeting.

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Krišjānis Kariņš (PPE). – On a point of order, Chair, I would kindly request you to be much

stricter in the time allocation. All of the groups have questions to ask. We have yet another organisation to go through today. I think it is not correct that one group monopolises the time and, in addition, actually gets no information. So please be quite strict with the time.

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Chair. – I will absolutely do that, but at the same time we need a little bit of balance if an interesting question comes up; sometimes an answer is important and we can exceed the time,

but of course there should be a good balance. Can I conclude this first hearing by giving some additional information. First of all, if there

are additional questions, you can put them in writing to make sure you get an answer. Second, as mentioned at the beginning – but I want to underline this again – we will go to Ispra, we

will see and have a lot of other opportunities to ask questions. That will be in July that we will organise that.

Also as I said at the beginning, we have requested a lot of documents. One of them is the minutes of the meetings of all these experts groups, including the RDE- LDV. We will get

these, I think, within 10 or 15 days at the latest. As you have seen, there were a lot of questions and not all the question have been answered.

We will come back to that.

I wish to thank you for your attendance and answers.

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24 19-04-2016

Chair. – I would like now to move on to item 4, which is the Hearing of the International

Council of Clean Transportation.

Can I remind you that you will all have received the replies to the preliminary set of written question; you can find them in the file and I thought they were very interesting. So do not ask these questions again.

I would like to ask Mr Vicente Franco to give a short introduction of a maximum of 10

minutes, because everything will come up in the questions as well. I give him the floor.

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Vicente Franco, International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT). – Madam Chair, members of the EMIS Committee, good afternoon. My name is Vicente Franco, and I am a

researcher with the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT). I specialise in light- and heavy-duty vehicle emissions. On behalf of the ICCT, I am honoured to participate

in this hearing and to assist the committee as it continues its inquiry into vehicle emissions measurement and control in the automotive sector.

The ICCT is an independent, non-profit research organisation with expertise in light- and heavy-duty vehicles, transportation fuels, shipping, aviation, climate science, and public

health. Our primary focus is on helping public sector agencies promulgate effective transport regulations to minimise climate change and benefit public health. We pursue these goals by providing high-quality, data-driven analysis to policymakers and other stakeholders who need

timely, accurate, topical, policy-relevant information. Public sector agencies and NGOs with which the ICCT works include the European

Commission, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), as well as environmental, energy, and transportation

ministries in China, India, Mexico, and Brazil. The ICCT is a participant in the Global Fuel Economy Initiative (GFEI) and in the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived

Climate Pollutants (CCAC). It has special consultative status to the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and it actively participates in the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) meetings on the development of a worldwide-harmonised light duty vehicle

emissions test procedure.

In my remarks today, I will focus on the on-road emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), which have proven particularly challenging to control, specifically in diesel passenger cars. Nitrogen oxides are harmful pollutants by themselves. They also react with other compounds to form

small particles as well as ground-level ozone (both of which are components of smog). These have a variety of adverse health effects, including damage to lung tissue, reduced lung

function, respiratory diseases such as emphysema, and others. The effects may be felt by otherwise healthy people but are particularly severe in susceptible populations, such as people with asthma, children, and the elderly. In some cases, the effects can lead to premature death.

Internal combustion engines have historically been a significant source of NOx, which are produced from the reaction of nitrogen and oxygen during combustion. Technologies are

available that can effectively control NOx emissions from road vehicles, and current European vehicle emission standards (Euro 6/VI) necessitate their use. But controlling NOx emissions from diesel cars is technically challenging. Minor benefits in fuel consumption,

user convenience and technology costs may come at the price of major detriments to the emissions performance.

Over the past fifteen years, European standards for NOx emissions from diesel cars have become increasingly stringent. But, while actual on-road NOx emissions from diesel cars in

Europe have declined slightly, on average they have not done so at the same pace as the

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regulatory limits. In fact, on-road measured NOx emissions under the current (Euro 6)

standard as of 2014 exceeded the mandated limits that were in effect fifteen years earlier (Euro 3). We estimate that on-road NOx emissions from diesel cars exceed the regulatory

emission limit by a factor of 7. This is the highest rate of exceedance since vehicle emissions regulations were adopted in Europe, and it makes NOx emissions from diesel cars one of the most significant open issues concerning transport and air quality.

The scientific community in Europe had been increasingly aware of high in-use NOx

emissions from diesel vehicles for several years prior to 2015. High emissions tend to happen during instances of demanding driving (e.g., during sudden accelerations or going uphill) that are part of normal operation but that are not adequately captured by the type-approval testing.

The research project that the ICCT undertook in collaboration with West Virginia University in 2013 and 2014, which eventually led to the action by the US Environmental Protection

Agency (EPA) and California Air Resources Board (CARB) that uncovered Volkswagen’s use of defeat devices, took place in the context of that growing awareness. That project, in turn, fed into a larger project within ICCT’s broader research agenda – a meta-analysis of

PEMS data from EU (Euro 6) and US (Tier 2 Bin 5/ULEV II) diesel passenger cars that documented a wide discrepancy existing between type-approval NOx emissions from new

diesel passenger cars and actual NOx emissions from those vehicles during real-world, everyday driving.

The October 2014 ICCT study showed that average, real-world NOx emissions from the tested vehicles were about seven times higher than Euro 6 limits. In most cases, the

exceedances could not be attributed to extreme driving, but were instead due to transient increases in engine load typical of everyday driving or to normal regeneration events in the diesel exhaust after-treatment systems. That study provided compelling evidence of a real-

world NOx compliance issue for recent-technology diesel passenger cars. It also provided compelling evidence that the technologies for real-world clean diesels already exist: some of

the tested vehicles had average emissions below or close to Euro 6 emission limits, suggesting that the technologies to achieve that level of performance are available, but that policies are not yet in place to

motivate manufacturers to use these technologies and calibrate them to effectively control emissions over the majority of in-use operating conditions, not just those covered by the test

cycle. Here is a graphic illustration of the dimensions of this problem. We have also analysed a

smaller amount of on-road data from Euro 6 heavy trucks. On average, modern large diesel trucks appear to be cleaner – that is, to emit fewer grams of NOx per kilometre of on-road

operation – than Euro 6 diesel cars. In our view, in-service conformity testing (using portable emission measurement systems, PEMS), which has been in place for heavy-duty vehicles in Europe since 2014 but is not currently required for light-duty vehicles, is a major factor in the

good emissions performance of these trucks. In-use testing is an essential, proven effective element in any successful regulatory compliance and enforcement strategy.

With the Real Driving Emissions (RDE) Regulation and the proposed changes to the type-approval framework, the European Commission has already begun to take steps that will

improve the system of measuring, monitoring, and control of NOx emissions from cars. The employment of on-road testing for type approval of passenger cars is a pioneering innovation,

and the market surveillance provisions proposed – among other improvements – to the type-approval framework are particularly significant. But in our view both these regulations could be strengthened in important ways. As I have

already noted, in-use testing is a crucial component of an effective compliance and enforcement strategy. Expanding the focus of the RDE Regulation beyond type approval to

in-use testing of vehicles obtained from private individuals and fleets would significantly

26 19-04-2016

benefit the control of real-world vehicle emissions. Extending the boundary conditions of the

RDE test, and including cold-start emissions in the evaluation, would let it more accurately capture the full, fleet-wide range of on-road emissions. And eventually the conformity factors

can and should be adjusted downward to reflect the emissions performance that is attainable with current technology.

Transparency is essential to public accountability, and both the RDE regulation and the proposed new type-approval framework could and should go further towards making

available to the public information concerning vehicle testing and performance, including on-road test results and important parameters in the type approval tests, such as the road-load coefficients that determine how accurately laboratory type-approval tests simulate actual

on-road conditions for any given vehicle.

In spite of its many positive aspects, the proposed new type-approval framework does not succeed in clarifying existing ambiguities in the regulatory provisions that prohibit emission control defeat devices in Europe – specifically, ambiguities in how exemptions from the

prohibition are administered and in the definition of emission control systems. What is needed is a thorough reporting and approval system for the use of any alternative emissions control

calibration, with a requirement to disclose the presence of any element of design that changes the operation of the vehicle emission control system during operation based on parameters such as temperature, vehicle speed, engine speed, transmission gear, and so on, and which

places the burden on manufacturers to prove to qualified, independent experts at a detailed technical level, prior to type approval, that this alternative calibration is necessary and that no

viable alternative solutions exist. Once again, thank you for inviting me here to discuss these important issues with you today. I

look forward to your questions and comments.

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Chair. – That was good timing; thank you very much. We will now start with the first round

of questions, which will be the same as before – five minutes. I give the floor to the first of the two rapporteurs, Mr Zalba Bidegain.

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Pablo Zalba Bidegain (PPE). – Madam Chair, Mr Franco, there is something I am curious

about. I should like to know the origin of your organisation’s interest in studying the divergences in

emissions. Some people say that your attention was drawn to the matter by the Commission, officially or even semi-officially.

I should like to know whether your interest stems from information that reached you via the Commission and, if this was not the case ― if no information reached you via the

Commission ―, why you opened your investigations.

I ask myself this question because, if I am not mistaken, in October 2014 your institution recognised the excellent work undertaken by the Commission and considered that the European Union, as the first region in the world to use portable emission measurement

systems, was setting a precedent for other regions.

I should also like to know your opinion on the action taken by the Commission and by the Member States.

1-108-0000

Vicente Franco, ICCT. Thank you for your questions. I will try to address them in order. The

interest of the ICCT in studying real-world NOx emissions from diesel passenger cars stems

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from the fact that we are researchers; we are members of the research community and it was

widely known that this was an open issue in the regulations concerning transport and air quality, as I said in my statement. So it doesn’t go beyond that. It was a hot topic in research,

and it was a pretty obvious choice for a topic to go into and to do more work on. We were not alerted by the Commission to the high end-use NOx emission levels from passenger cars. Basically, there was no need. There were several peer-review papers and research reports

from other organisations that pointed to a compliance problem. There was no alerting, as the European Commission doesn’t decide our research agenda; we are an independent

organisation. You quote the October 2014 study, saying that we said that the Commission had done a great

job – ‘gran trabajo’, though I am not sure that was the literal wording but in any case we did praise the Commission for starting the RDE group back in 2011, as I said in my statement, for

measuring the emissions of passenger cars’ during type-approval using PEMS. That was a pioneering innovation in vehicle emission regulations, and it was I think fair to praise the Commission when and where praise was warranted. So that’s, what we did.

I guess this ties in with your last question about my opinion on the action of the Commission

and Member States, and I guess you are referring to since 2011, or since September 2015. Both? I see. I will start with September 2011 and take it from there.

As I said, we think the Commission had the right diagnosis, even before there was a disease. I would like to take a look at the timing of the introduction of Euro 6 vehicles. These vehicles

only started entering the market in 2012, and there was a very small number of models available then; I don’t think there were any available in 2011. In spite of that, the Commission already saw that there could be a problem with enforcement unless some action was taken. In

this case, the action was to create this additional road test, with elements of randomness, which would help overcome limitations not so much in terms of the weakness of the

framework against defeat devices, but maybe, back in the day, more in terms of the lack of representativeness of the NEDC as a cycle because, as you may know, the cycle that is currently used for the type approval of emissions is very under-loaded; its very mild and NOx

emissions from diesels tend to grow the higher the load. So if you type approve vehicles with a cycle that is very low in load, you could easily have real-world NOx emissions that are high,

in the absence of a defeat device.

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Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy (ALDE). – Thank you, Mr Franco, for your clear statements so far.

I have three brief questions. First of all, as you have already made clear in your presentation, the exceedance of NOx emissions is not new. So my first question is, did your organisation

study those even before 2013 or did you only start doing so from then? My second question is about the difference between the European and the United States

systems. I think one of the main differences is that, in Europe, the way we test is made public so every detail is known by the manufacturers. In the US, how they test is a secret. Which of

the two methods do you believe creates a fairer level playing field and makes enforcement easier?

Finally, in your written answers you state in answer to question three that defeat devices can be detected with currently available instruments and testing methods. I listened to the JRC and

they are telling us that it is not possible with current technology, but that they needed much deeper and more sophisticated analysis and they did not have the resources necessary for that. Do you have the feeling that, when you talk about available instruments and testing methods,

28 19-04-2016

this is a very costly thing, or are you of the opinion that the JRC would have been able to

detect those defeat devices as well?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – Thank you for your questions. Yes, the exceedance of NOx

emissions from diesels is certainly not new. I believe the ICCT has some research on that topic, focusing more on heavy-duty vehicles, but I can tell you that I was specifically hired to do research into this topic in 2013 – 50% of my time allocation would go on this topic and, as

things turned out, I ended up working 90% of the time on this because there was so much going on at the time. I am talking about 2013. Yes, we do have some work, but I think it is

mostly on heavy-duty. You say that in the US it is a secret how they test. Well, in the US they certify their emissions

with chassis-dynamo testing. They use cycles, like we do in Europe. What you are referring to is a rather new approach of the agencies, of the EPA and CARB. It was just recently adopted

following the Volkswagen scandal. I think they sent a letter to the manufacturers saying that from that moment on they would be testing vehicles with PEMS, random cycles, remote sensing and a number of techniques that were not described in detail. I think that that is a

good thing. That is not for emissions certification, it is more for defeat device screening and for enforcement and compliance. That works rather well, I think, because it introduces an

element of randomness. You definitely would not want to have a protocol for defeat device detection, because this is something that by definition does not work. It cannot be a protocol, it has to be a toolbox, or a ‘bag of tricks’ if you like a colloquial description of the situation. It

works in this way. You need to have an element of randomness because it is not clear how defeat devices work and you do not know what you are looking for, so you need to open up

your resources. We did say that defeat devices can be detected with current instruments and methods. I think

we interpreted that question in the sense that we were wondering if you were asking if some new invention was needed, or some new instrument that is not available yet, or if a prototype

would be required to detect defeat devices. In that sense our answer was no. You can use PEMS, you can use remote sensing, you can use random cycles, and you can use the instruments and the methods currently available to do defeat device detection. That does not

mean that it is easy or that it is clear how that should be done. We think it is actually very challenging to detect a defeat device but, from the instrumental point of view, it does not

require anything that has not yet been invented or any technique that is not widely available.

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Krišjānis Kariņš (PPE). – Mr Franco, I am listening with interest. I have read your study published in 2014. I want to focus on a graph you have in your presentation today, on page 5,

which is from your executive summary on page 3 of your study, where we have the scattergram of all the individual vehicles alphabetically. Of course everyone is focusing on the non-conformity rate – an average of 7 and, oh my God, some going up into the 20s. I want

to ask about the conformed vehicle. What to me is surprising about this – striking – is that we do have a vehicle which in real world conditions adheres to the standards. My question to you

is: wow, what are they doing right? Is this a smaller engine? Is this a bigger engine? What is it about this vehicle? Can you tell us who makes this car? What is it about this vehicle that leads it to conform? Obviously the technology exists. This one company, with this one model, is

doing it right. What are they doing? Is it a larger engine so it is not being revved at such…? What can you tell us?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – That is one car out of 15, unfortunately, as you said. I can tell you who makes that car. I will get back to that later. The nice thing about PEMS is that it is different every time. You can drive your car under different conditions and you always get

this nice time-resolved file with all the signals. You can really get lots of information. We

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researchers really love PEMS. That particular car, unfortunately – that dot only has one hour

of data behind it. It was tested by emissions analytics, i.e. a third-party testing house based in the UK, from which we purchased this particular data set. The manufacturer is not listed in

the report itself, but since the EPA, so to speak, outed the BMWs and the Volkswagens in the West Virginia study, and those cars are also present in the metastudy, you can actually trace it. I can tell you that that is a BMW.

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Krišjānis Kariņš (PPE). – So it is a BMW. Is this a model which is larger? There are BMWs which are large and small. In Europe, we have a tax advantage – an incentive – for buyers to

buy small engines. In Belgium and in other countries you get a reward of cheaper taxes if it is a small engine. Is this, by any chance, a larger-model BMW? Our policies of giving tax advantages to small engines could actually have been wrong-headed, because the trucks are

also emitting less. So is this a larger-model BMW?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – It’s a BMW 320 GT. That is not in the report. But I can tell you this

because we own this data set.

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Chair. – For us women, is that a big car?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – I think it’s like the 3 Series with a big behind; it’s a medium – or

rather, to me – a big car.

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Krišjānis Kariņš (PPE). – So for you it is a big car. Is the engine a more powerful engine?

1-114-0937

Vicente Franco, ICCT. – I think it should be a 2-litre engine. There is nothing particular

about it. But just to get back to your question, it is true that for the smaller engines the tendency in the market – and we showed this in our September 2015 report on NOx control technologies for diesel passenger cars – tends to be the LNT technology which perhaps has,

on average, poorer real-world performance.

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Krišjānis Kariņš (PPE). – So what you are saying is that perhaps, our legislation and

national legislation, in encouraging consumers to buy small-litre diesel engines, has actually been counterproductive in reducing NOx emissions and that actually our policies have perhaps been false because what you are saying is that the small engines have worse results?

1-114-0984

Vicente Franco, ICCT. – No, I am saying that the small engines tend to be equipped with a technology that may be worse.

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Krišjānis Kariņš (PPE). – So the smaller engines have more NOx emissions?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – If you want to make that as a logical association. To me, it is a bit of a stretch. It is a blanket statement that I cannot condone. There is the issue of the vehicle:

the displacement of the engine is one thing, but probably with turbocharging you are better off looking at the CO2 emissions or the power as a better metric, we should not really focus on the displacement of the engine, the size of the engine. It is complicated.

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Massimo Paolucci (S&D). – I appreciated the spirit of fair play apparent in your reply to question 6 on the 2012 Commission call for tenders, in response to which you made a bid that was rejected. But let us now put fair play to one side and get down to the nitty gritty. First

question: in your reply to question 3 on defeat devices, you made an interesting statement. You said that defeat devices could be detected using instruments that are currently available

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but that the current rules made it difficult to distinguish between what is legal and what is

illegal. Did I understand you right?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – The first part of the answer relates to the instruments. So it is

possible to detect a defeat device but, first of all, you need to know what you are looking for, and whether certain exhaust-aftertreatment calibration constitutes a defeat device or not is written in the regulations. So, if there is a lack of clarity or ambiguity, if you will, in the

regulations, then it does not matter if you have the ... (speaker is interrupted)

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Massimo Paolucci (S&D). – So we need clearer rules? We need clear rules?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – You need more detail. I think Mr Krasenbrink hit the nail on the

head earlier. He said that we need assessment criteria. I think those were his words. I think he also said that the Commission are already working on that. This is something that the US

authorities have. They have descriptions of the situations under which the alternative calibrations – let us not call them defeat devices – the deactivation of the systems is permissible and it is technically justified. That kind of document exists in the US but it is

lacking in Europe.

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Massimo Paolucci (S&D). – So defeat devices are essential?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – For what?

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Massimo Paolucci (S&D). – Essential in order to protect the engine.

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – I would like to think that that is not the case.

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Massimo Paolucci (S&D). – As you know, this is provided for in Article 5(2) of the EU

regulation: it is an exception that is intended to protect the engine under certain conditions.

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – Yes. You are referring to this exemption and defeat device

provision that allows defeat devices, as long as they are needed for the protection of the engine. That is fine, in principle, but it needs to be technically justified because otherwise, if there is no clear definition of when these exemptions apply, you are opening the gate to abuse

and effectively it can become a loophole, and that that needs to be addressed.

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Massimo Paolucci (S&D). – In your replies, you come down hard on diesel engines. Is diesel

technology incompatible with the shift towards hybrid engines?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – Absolutely not. The ICCT is technology-agnostic. We are OK with any technology as long as it is clean. We do not like dirty diesel. We are OK with clean

diesel, and we are pretty sure that it can be part of the future technology mix. There is no reason why we should not have clean diesel.

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Massimo Paolucci (S&D). – That was not a general question. Of course, there is clean diesel

and there is dirty diesel, but given that we are shifting towards hybrid engines, what I would like is to gain a clearer picture of whether that shift is easier to make with diesel engines or

with petrol engines.

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – You can have both hybrids, from diesel and from gasoline, but

probably it is not very cost-effective to have a diesel-hybrid vehicle; it is very expensive. You have the additional costs of the after-treatment and the battery. There are not many diesel

hybrids on the market, and I think there is an economic reason for that, a cost-effectiveness reason.

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Massimo Paolucci (S&D). – One last quick question: unless my information is wrong, you

worked at the Joint Research Centre in Ispra, then left for the United States. In view of the results, would you say that you had more luck, more opportunities or more freedom?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – I work from Berlin. I do not work in the US. It is a different type of environment because it is not working for a government, and being a PhD student is not the same as being a researcher for an NGO. There are similarities in the job but I do not really

understand the sense of your question. I enjoyed working for both organisations, definitely.

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Julie Girling (ECR). – I would just like to ask a question about the defeat device itself, just to get to the bottom of the use, or otherwise, of defeat devices in Europe. The work that was

done by ICCT was instrumental in bringing to the attention of the American authorities the use of defeat devices there, through the University of West Virginia, this was quite clear. The

defeat device was detected because of the discrepancy between the PEMS testing and the test results. So, that has been going on in Europe and the ICCT have also been involved in that. We have had, and we have heard earlier from JRC also, a relatively long history now of

discrepancies between on-road, PEMS and type approval. Can we conclude that there is likely to be the use of defeat devices in Europe, or there has been the use of defeat devices in

Europe, or not? Or, to put it the other way round, can we conclude that there has not been the use of a defeat device in Europe?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – I guess you would have to. When you talk about defeat devices in

Europe, you mean under European law, so there could be a different interpretation in US and EU law. What we have in Europe is high in-use NOx emissions. Whether that comes from the

use of defeat devices or not, I cannot really say.

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Julie Girling (ECR). – My point is that the researchers in the US made that connection and then the US Government investigated and found the defeat device. Has your research in

Europe made that connection? Do you think that enough investigation has been done by the authorities in Europe to find that defeat device, if there is one?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – When you say that the researchers made that connection, are you

referring to the University of West Virginia?

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Julie Girling (ECR). –I refer to the work done between the ICCT and the University of West

Virginia.

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – I perhaps need to clarify that. We did not find that defeat device. We found a very high discrepancy between in-use NOx emissions and the certified levels. In

this particular case, if I may, it was particularly big because the in-use emissions, if you look at the slide I showed from the meta study, the US cars are particularly bad offenders. Those vehicles were certified to an emissions limit that was half of EURO 6 roughly and those

emissions were measured over a cycle that is more demanding than the European cycle. So it really stood out.

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Julie Girling (ECR). – I understand all that, but the connection was made that, because there

was such a discrepancy, it was worth looking for a defeat device. So, whether it was the ICCT (and I stand corrected: it was the University of West Virginia that then did that), what I am

asking you is whether that should have happened or did happen in any way in Europe, and whether we can conclude, therefore, that when you get those discrepancies it is likely that a defeat device is being used in the testing?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – It is a very honest question. Before the Volkswagen scandal we did not have a big research programme on defeat devices. This is a new thing. It is certainly a

very hot topic right now, but that has only happened since September 2015.

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Julie Girling (ECR). – So there is nothing in your research that can help us to establish whether a defeat device was in fact in place in Europe or not?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – You would have an indication of high in-use NOx emissions from certain vehicles, but in order to determine whether a car has a defeat device or not, you need to conduct very lengthy investigations. In fact, the investigations in the US have been ongoing

since 2014. So it takes many months and it is not for an NGO to conduct that kind of work. It is really up to the authorities.

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Julie Girling (ECR). – OK. Well, I have no engineering qualifications at all, but I can draw those conclusions – or at least those suspicions – from the data. The question is whether ICCT have any suggestions, perhaps, any way in which they can help us to mine that data for the

EU and find out whether a defeat device was in fact in place.

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – It is interesting. Slightly unrelated, but we are going to release the second part of this meta-study that I showed a slide for and that is going to cover many more

cars. It is going to cover 30 or so cars and we plan on being very detailed. We are basically going to publish second-by-second data, not the original files, but charts that can allow you to

trace where the high emissions were coming from and we are going to produce a very thorough report. But that is still in preparation. I get the question a lot about when it will be ready: it will take a few months.

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Fredrick Federley (ALDE). – Your studies show quite a wide disparity between NOx emission values, as measured by the current laboratory test and as measured in real driving

conditions – on average, up to seven times higher. This is an obvious case for having RDE tests introduced. However, in your view, is it also solid proof that the so-called conformity factor would need to start at a much higher level than two?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – Thank you for question. One quick point about average emission factors, it is true that the average is seven but, as has been pointed out earlier, the scatter is

very big and there a minority of cars that are actually rather good performers. So what we gather from those results is that with current technology it is actually possible to achieve Euro 6 or Euro 6-compatible emission limits on the road. That is why the suggestion that we should

have a high conformity factor does not really strike me as appropriate. I think we should try to set the conformity factor at such a level that it drives improvements and that it fosters the

adoption of best technology. You said that the chart was a validation of the Audi approach. We also tend to see it like that.

The Audi process started in 2011 and these results were only published by the end of 2014. What we concluded from those results was that the Commission had got it right back in 2011

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by starting the process, and that RD was definitely needed, and perhaps it should even be

taken a step further.

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Merja Kyllönen (GUE/NGL). – I have a collection of questions. What would be the duration

of defeat-device screening in the current circumstances and what would be the cost per car? In what timeframe would it be possible to implement sufficiently enough repeatable PEMS tests also for the particle numbers? Is there any possibility that in the future the car’s own

monitoring system would be able to measure the real driving emissions more pervasively than today? Lastly, how likely is it that doing pervasive post-sales driving emission measurements

could reveal new car brands that have used defeat-device programmes?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – Could you please repeat the last question?

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Merja Kyllönen (GUE/NGL). – How likely is it that doing pervasive post-sales driving

emission measurements could reveal new car brands that have used defeat-device programmes?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – You mean by doing a screening of the market? And your first

question is: what is the reason to have a defeat device?

So, the reason, as I said in my opening statement, there are trade-offs with cost, fuel consumption, user convenience, depending on the technology. Just to give you an example, the LNT technology requires periodical regeneration of the catalyst and that comes at a

penalty of a 2-4% increase in fuel consumption if you want to have good NOx performance. For SCR for example, there are trade-offs with user convenience, because if you use urea

generously then the refilling intervals go down and it is possible that the user will have to refill the urea tank, and that can be seen as an inconvenience to the driver. There are some cost considerations as well, but those are essentially the reasons to engineer a defeat device. It

is not a problem of engineers being lazy or stupid. The costs of defeat device screening for one car depends. They can be very cheap if you just use a very simple NOx sensor and drive

your car around to get a first indication if the car is performing well or not. But if you follow a lead and try to ascertain that a car has a defeat device then the follow-up tests can get costly – I would put it in the thousands of euros, maybe EUR 10-20 000 per car, depending on the

number of tests. Regarding the particle number tests, in this particular case the instrumentation is not as technologically mature as it is for the gaseous pollutants. But the

latest news that I have from the RDE technical meetings is that it will be ready by 2019, so that is good news.

It is a very interesting question whether cars will be able to measure their own emissions. Actually, yes, I think cars nowadays are equipped with NOx sensors and the exhaust air flow

can be estimated by the ECU so a car should be able today to report quite accurately its own emissions. The point is can we trust the self-reported emissions of a car? Please do not make me answer that question right now, but perhaps with validation of such signals? That is also

an open field for regulators to explore. It is a really interesting question that you raise. Thank you for it.

The last question was how likely is it that the new defeat devices will be detected? I cannot know because it is unknown right now so there is no point in me speculating about that so I

will deflect that question if you do not mind.

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Rebecca Harms (Verts/ALE). – I would like to ask a question concerning your first written answer to the questions we gave you before. You tell us, in this first answer, that you

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presented your findings in your first report on discrepancies in between the limits, based on

law, and their measurements. You told us that you presented your findings on 31 March 2014, in an RDE working group here in Brussels, and then later, in October, you published your

study and your expertise on the discrepancies on your website. I would be interested to know if there have been any requests, following these discussions and then publication on your website, from national authorities or from the European Commission.

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – It may have been shortly before, or shortly after, but around the time that I presented my preliminary findings to the RDE-LDV group in March 2014, we had

a call from the Berlin office from Klaus Steininger, who is the policy officer in charge of RDE. There are no minutes of that call but, as I recall, our appraisal of the situation was that RDE was indeed needed. I want to point out that the cars that are covered in the meta-study

should be considered pre-RDE Euro 6 cars, so cars that were certified in the laboratory alone – they were not conceived and their aftertreatments were not calibrated to deal with the RDE

test. That is what came out of that exchange of views with the Commission, with DG GROW, in that sense.

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Rebecca Harms (Verts/ALE). – I am interested in this, in a way, ‘missing link’ between

science and technology, and the authorities and also then later on politics. The Commission told us that the EPA, the United States authorities, were tougher on the discrepancies

compared with the European Commission because NGOs had given the United States authorities better evidence on the problems. So the question is whether the evidence given to the European authorities, be it at the Brussels or national level, has been weaker compared

with what you made available as evidence to the United States authorities.

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – The report that we published in May 2014, the West Virginia one, was brought to the attention of the EPA, but it was also published on our website and it has

been there ever since. The October 2014 European study took a little longer. It was slightly different in its conception because in this case we did not commission the measurements

directly but rather we collected existing data sets from stakeholders of the RDE group and then published an aggregated study, this meta-study, so the process is slightly different. But the context was different too and, when you speak about the link between policy and research,

I think we are proud to be part of that link, and the JRC is also for sure.

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Rebecca Harms (Verts/ALE). – Would you, then, say that the European Commission could

have had the same evidence, based on your information, as EPA had in the United States?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – What information are you referring to?

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Rebecca Harms (Verts/ALE). – The evidence. Has the ICCT made the same evidence

available to the European competent authorities as to the EPA?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – But the evidence in EPA’s case refers to US-certified vehicles. So it is in a different context.

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Eleonora Evi (EFDD). – Madam Chair, I should like to come back to the issue of defeat devices. According to the statements made by the JRC, these devices are all but impossible to detect if their presence is not reported by the manufacturers themselves, which is a rather

strange state of affairs, to say the least. In your opinion, could there be any specific technical reasons preventing manufacturers from reporting the presence of defeat devices, despite the

fact that they can be fitted lawfully on the basis of the exemptions provided for in the rules. So are there any strictly technical reasons for not reporting the presence of defeat devices?

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I also have another question, regarding more specifically the issue of technological neutrality: the reply to question 10 states that the introduction of the conformity factor militates against

technological neutrality. I would therefore like to know your views on how a European policy of pushing sales of diesel vehicles squares with air quality targets and the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions, given that the conformity factor favours one technology over the

other.

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – I see no technical impediments for the disclosure of alternative

calibrations. It is being done in the US and it does not have any particularly grave consequences for manufacturers, so the same thing could be done in Europe and I expect that it will be done in the next few months or years.

Your question about technology neutrality is interesting. So the Euro 6 standards are not

technology neutral. Specifically in what regard? For NOx, the NOx emission limit for diesel cars is actually a bit higher than it is for gasoline cars and, if you apply the same conformity factor to two different limits, you end up with a second set of two different limits and you still

have a higher limit for diesel. The fact is that, if the reasoning behind the conformity factor is that diesel actually needs it because the current real-world performance is not as good as that

of gasoline, then if you give an allowance to gasoline that it does not need, it is actually not doing anything for technology neutrality.

There is another counterpoint to that, which is that RDE is not only about NOx emissions. It is also about particle number (PN) emissions, the ultra-fine particles. That is mostly motivated

by a subset of gasoline passenger cars. That is the direct-injection fuelled vehicles which may or may not have a problem on the road. This is something that we will have to ascertain in the coming few months or years. In that sense the RDE also has a certain amount of foresight and

it is, maybe, able to address this problem and avoid it getting as big as NOx non-compliance for diesel. So that is another reason to praise RDE.

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Ivo Belet (PPE). – Mr Franco, thank you for your explanations. I would like to come back to

the draft of your presentation, page 5: SCR technology and the BMW 320 GT. When you look at the graph there are a lot of technologies, of course, and you see that different cars with

the same SCR technology have a completely different measurement and they perform completely differently. Can you explain why?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – Yes. SCR technology is an active technology. It is not a filter that

works mostly by being there; it has to be managed by the ECU of the vehicle. So, in order to have a good performance the car has to make decisions about how it applies the technology.

Some cars are better at making good decisions to keep NOx down, and others not so much. It is a matter of how the after-treatment system is calibrated to deal with the on-road conditions. It is also true that the driving conditions behind those PEMS tests are not the same. The cars

and the data sets come from different providers, they were tested in different locations with different drivers, in different conditions in general. So I would not expect all SCR cars to

behave similarly. This kind of scatter is to be expected from PEMS experiments.

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Ivo Belet (PPE). – What you are saying is that it also depends on the quality of the SCR technology, whether it is delivered or whether the equipment comes from another contractor.

Is that correct?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – It is not so much about the hardware, but mostly about the software, I would say. But there is this scatter and then there is the scatter that comes from the driving

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conditions. There are several factors at play there, so it is difficult to normalise and to remove

those biases to get to the same result. Even for the same car driven twice over the same route, you would get a certain amount of natural variability, which is to be expected from PEMS.

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Ivo Belet (PPE). – So what you are saying is that with the SCR, the hardware has to be combined with software, and some automobile manufacturers are better at combining the two, and then they have a better result and that makes a big difference in terms of being at the top

of the list or at the bottom?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – Yes, that is a plausible explanation of the emissions. It explains a

great deal of the scatter in the results. It is a combination of both, but the software definitely plays a big role. You can have the best hardware but, if the software is not good, you will have a very bad performance.

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Theresa Griffin (S&D). – Mr Franco, as you are aware, 400 000 EU citizens die every year from air pollution, and I welcome your emphasis on health. But really one is a question about process and one is a question about policy, if I may: which processes that have been adopted

by the US would you recommend for the EU? In addition, as you described, there are mechanisms and technologies you would recommend to test vehicles in conditions which

would adequately reflect real-world driving. You mentioned in-use testing, R&D expansion, cold-start emissions and speed. You touched on this slightly, but what would be your key top 3 priorities for policy-makers in this field?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – Yes, it is about public health. This is a major public health issue and it is good to keep that in mind. We want to have clean air, not in emissions laboratories but in

the cities and the towns where we live. There are elements of US legislation that could be incorporated into EU legislation. One of them was pointed out earlier. It is these assessment criteria, these definitions as to when it is acceptable to have an alternative calibration and

when it is not and would, therefore, be talking about defeat devices. That is an interesting element. An element that is missing in the US framework, for example, is using PEMS type-

approval. No system is perfect, and no system covers all the bases. But, in general, it is true that our appraisal of both systems indicates that the US has a stronger and more robust system right now, and that is due to their focus on in-service conformity, which until now is lacking

in Europe but is hopefully going to be adopted with the proposed new type approval framework. In terms of RDE recommendations, our first recommendation is to expand RDE

to in-service conformity. The procedures to perform the test are already there and it would be relatively easy to expand this test to cover vehicles that are already in use. That would be a very positive step. We also suggest that the conformity factors should be lowered. At least

they should be reviewed to reflect the state of technology, so that they can drive innovations and drive the adoption of best technologies. We would also like for the RDE boundary

conditions to be expanded in order to cover as much of the wide spectrum of real-world driving conditions as possible.

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Massimiliano Salini (PPE). – Madam Chair, I should like to come back to some of the

comments made by Mr Zalba. The first issue concerns the statement to the effect that the ICCT carries out its investigations independently. On 13 November 2015, it was reported in a German newspaper that in 2011 a number of Commission officials had informed the ICCT

about suspected emission discrepancies and asked for action to be taken in order to draw attention to the Commission’s failure to act. This would tend to go somewhat against that

claim, and I would therefore ask you for your comments on that report, with which we are all familiar.

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A second issue to which Mr Zalba referred is the fact that in 2014 the ICCT said some nice

words about the procedures used by the European Union for conducting on-the-road emissions tests, and I would like to draw attention to another statement made by the ICCT still

more recently, in December 2015, in which it called the European Union a pioneer in on-the-road testing. This makes it all the stranger that the European Union is now being, shall we say, called to task on this issue. I would therefore be interested in hearing your comments on

this matter.

And the third and last issue concerns the request that the ICCT made to West Virginia University for further information on diesel emissions, to which you yourself referred. My question is a simple one: why did the ICCT ask West Virginia University for further

information? In other words, what was the purpose of the request made to West Virginia University for further information on emissions from diesel vehicles?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – I am not aware of this article in the German magazine. I was not working at the ICCT in 2011, but I am not aware of any tip-offs from Commission officials to the ICCT.

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Massimiliano Salini (PPE). – The article appeared in November 2015. It gave details of the information supplied by Commission officials.

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – I am not aware of it and I do not think that is the case, quite frankly.

You said that the ICCT is accusing the European Commission of something? Did I misunderstand? No. So, we praise them and we stand by that praise.

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Massimiliano Salini (PPE). – But if you are not familiar with the article, you are not obliged to answer that part of the question.

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – The reason why we investigated the diesel emissions in the US is

because we were wrong at the time. We thought that the US system was better and that there was no real need for RDE. That was our research hypothesis, namely that the diesel market in the US was doing fine with the cycles and we were going to prove it to the Europeans by

testing diesel cars in the US and proving that they are clean on the road. It is too bad that two out of the three cars were not so clean.

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Martina Werner (S&D). – Mr Franco, you state in your written answers that, in terms of reliability, PEMS tests are now virtually comparable with laboratory testing – but that reproducibility cannot be ensured. And you have just explained this. It is in the nature of the

thing. However, we also hear the point made by critics that technical differences between types of PEMS equipment and between manufacturers are posing problems and continuing to

complicate the comparability of results considerably. In that regard and as a matter of principle, do you think further improvement is needed in terms of methodology and technology? How do you anticipate that the reliability of PEMS tests will develop in the

coming years, in terms of what the manufacturers are developing?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – PEMS systems are actually quite reputable; they are very reputable.

What they are not is reproducible, which is slightly different. It means that if you were able to, for example, on a track run the same cycle twice or three times, you would get pretty much the same result every time with the PEMS. But the tests are not reproducible because as they

happen on the road there are too many natural sources of variability, such as weather, traffic situations, which cannot be controlled and cannot be fixed. Therefore, under real-world

conditions you cannot get the same result. But that is not repeatability and does not really

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refer so much to the instruments as to the environment and to the boundary conditions. I think

the PEMS is likely to improve in the near future. We have seen significant improvements since RDE was confirmed. You should take a look at the new systems; they are really

compact and I would even say they are quite beautiful. So I think that the market forces will operate there, and they will get us increasingly better instruments. I expect to see lots of nice developments in on-road emissions measurement in the near future, driven by this pioneering

European innovation, by the way.

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Hans-Olaf Henkel (ECR). – I have just two questions. Firstly, we know that petroleum

companies advertise on the basis of differences in the quality of their fuels. Have you, in the course of testing, ever encountered differences in diesel quality in relation to NOx output?

Secondly, if you were an elected representative – and you have just indicated that you would welcome greater political support – what would you be proposing here?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – Thank you for your question. I am not an expert in fuels – I should start by saying that – but would say that there could be some differences in the NOx emissions

profile of the same car fuelled with two different fuels, though I would not expect those differences to be very large. The reason is that the nitrogen that is part of the NOx emissions

is actually coming from the ambient air. It is not present in the fuel. So those differences would not be as significant as those driven by, say, good versus bad after-treatment calibrations. I do not think it is a major factor at play for this particular issue. So, along those

lines, I would not have any particular recommendations.

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Hans-Olaf Henkel (ECR). – I wanted to have political recommendations, not ones on the diesel.

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – Then I misunderstood your question.

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Hans-Olaf Henkel (ECR). – You were suggesting that you were demanding more political support for your goals in your report, and I was wondering, if you were an MEP, what would

you propose?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – Well there is already a proposal on the table from the European

Commission that we quite like, but we do not know to what extent the final regulation will reflect the provisions that are included in that proposal. In some aspects it’s true that we think it could go even further, but we think it’s a nice starting point.

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Sven Schulze (PPE). – Thank you for taking our questions, Mr Franco. It is certainly not always easy, and we still have a lot of questions.

As an engineer myself, I sometimes wonder how such a study should be interpreted. I think that I now grasp fairly clearly – specifically in relation to the finding on page 5 of your study,

which you distributed to us today – that there is no reproducibility. If I understand you correctly, that is because reproducibility depends on a range of factors, and it could turn out –

were you to repeat the study – that you would get quite different results, even taking the same vehicles and trying insofar as possible to create all the same conditions, because it is simply not possible to reproduce everything. Does that mean that if you were to repeat a study it

would look entirely different? That is my first question.

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – I can basically give the same answer that I gave before, which is

that the reproducibility of PEMS tests is not the same as that for laboratory tests. It can be seen as a weakness in their technique, but I prefer to see it as actually a strength, because it

gives you a very rich gamut and a very rich picture of what is going on in the real world. If I reran the exact same tests, I would probably get different results. I think it is very unlikely

that I would get all cars in compliance. I would very much like that, and I would very much like to be wrong and to have multiplied my emissions by 10 due to some mistake in the Excel

files, but I am afraid that is not the case and the fact that we have a compliance issue is by now a scientific truth.

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Sven Schulze (PPE). – Okay, thank you for that answer.

My second question is on an entirely different track. With the experience you possess, how do

you see the future of the diesel engine? In your view, has its technical potential in terms of fuel efficiency and emissions reduction already been achieved, or do you anticipate even further, improved potential? I believe you have given quite a lot of consideration to that

question and invested quite a lot of research in it in recent weeks and months.

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – There is always potential for technical improvement; the internal combustion engine does not cease to surprise us engineers. There’s still a long way to go both for diesel and gasoline. There are options with hybridisation, there’s light-weighting and there

are many other technological pathways that would put us where we want to be with regard to our CO2 targets.

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Sven Schulze (PPE). – I am not talking about reducing vehicle weight or that sort of thing –

lightweight construction. What I am asking about is the actual engine, the engine technology.

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – Reducing the weight of a car with lighter materials that have the

same strength and maintain safety is actually a very nice way of reducing emissions, because you can equip a smaller engine. It is a solution that we like a lot, and not every improvement has to happen at the engine level. This is really an exciting industry to work in; it is full of

opportunities for innovation and exciting research.

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Ismail Ertug (S&D). – I am sure that you followed the previous hearing with the Joint Research Centre and that you heard how, although the JRC’s work also found major

discrepancies between actual pollutant emissions and the values from laboratory tests, the possibility that defeat devices were being used was basically ruled out. I would like to hear

what you think about that: should those findings have been followed up and should the precise reasons for them have been explored?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – I’m going to go back to my previous point about the timing and

introduction of Euro 6. I don’t think the JRC measured that many Euro 6 vehicles, and we are focusing on Euro 6 vehicles. The fact that Euro 5 vehicles had relatively poor performance

was known, and lots of hope was placed on Euro 6 as the technology that would finally solve this this issue. So when the JRC was testing Euro 5 cars, and they were seeing emissions of, for example, 300 milligrams per kilometre, or 400, the ratio of those on-road emissions to the

Euro 5 limit for NOx was not so bad, even if the emissions were higher for Euro 5 than for Euro 6. What makes the problem particularly bad is that the expectations are very high for

Euro 6, so the limit went from 180 milligrams per kilometre to 80. That’s a factor of 2.25. So these cars were really expected to deliver emissions improvements, and the fact that they did

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not, and the fact that this ratio between the expected performance and the actual performance

grew significantly is what gives you the dimension of the problem, but not so many Euro 6 diesel cars have been tested because they have not been available.

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Ismail Ertug (S&D). – Yes or no? I do not need to have the context outlined again. My question was very concrete and requires an answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’. What do you think?

Should those findings have been followed up and should the precise reasons for them have

been explored?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – Probably, but you are looking at this problem through the eyes of 2015, and these measurements go back to Euro 5, when the problem had a different

dimension. You have to take that into account. So, my answer would be ‘maybe’, but it was not as obvious then as it is to everyone in this room today.

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Ismail Ertug (S&D). – It was obvious that there were huge problems. In your opinion, could

the Commission not have ordered further research, indeed ought it not to have done so? It was, after all, obvious that there were major discrepancies.

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – The deviations grew significantly with Euro 6. Even though the emissions were higher with Euro 5, the ratio of the actual emissions to the limit was lower. So the problem was not as big, and there was the expectation that this problem would be fixed

with Euro 6, which did not happen.

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Françoise Grossetête (PPE). – What, in your opinion, are the differences between cars of the same model sold on the European market and those placed on the US market? Are there really

significant technological differences between vehicles of the same model according to where they are distributed? In other words, do manufacturers want their vehicles to differ according

to which country they are sold in? I would also like to know what sort of relationship you currently have with the national

authorities of the EU Member States and with the EU institutions, and what changes there have been in that regard since the Volkswagen scandal came to light.

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – Thank you for the question. We had, in September 2015 before the scandal broke, actually just released a report that looked into the emission control

technologies that were being used by diesel vehicle manufacturers in the US and in Europe, and we saw significant differences. Just to give you the highlights of the results, in Europe

LNT systems seemed to be more prevalent and they had grown in market share between 2012 and 2014, whereas in the US, SCR, which is a more robust technology, was the market leader.

We also saw for one particular manufacturer – BMW – starting, I believe, in 2013 or 2014 they actually moved 100% of their diesel offerings to SCR plus LNT, so they equipped two

after-treatment systems in their vehicles, when comparable vehicles in the EU would only equip SCR. I am not making a moral judgment, but our impression is that these differences were actually driven by stricter regulations in the US. The manufacturers simply took the

regulatory target and they threw the technology at the vehicles that was required for them to comply. That is the end of the story; there is nothing more to add to that. Emission regulations

that become stricter drive technology adoption. That is a fact of life. Perhaps in Europe they have not been strict enough. That is a lesson to be learned.

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Carlos Zorrinho (S&D). – Your statement was extremely interesting and has helped us to understand much about the state of the art and take a more optimistic view of the future.

Nevertheless, as we are debating a matter that was reported by your institute, it is important to understand whether the results of your research make it possible to say that potential fraud relating to the measurement of emissions affects only the Volkswagen group and the

European industry, or whether, given that there are also regulations for other industries, similar cases of fraud may have occurred there?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – Thank you for your question, but I reiterate that it is not for us to

say. The amount of evidence that we have does not allow us to say anything beyond stating that there still seems to be a pretty generalised problem with in-use NOx emissions from Euro

6 diesel passenger cars, at least with the current technology and current crop of Euro 6 diesel cars in Europe. Whether that is due to a defeat device or not, is not for us to say, and we do not have the evidence.

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Carlos Zorrinho (S&D). – But in your opinion, was this more likely to have occurred with a European than with any other manufacturer?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – There are differences. There are different technologies. The same technologies are available to all the manufacturers, and manufacturers make their technology choices on the basis of several constraints – economical, regulatory, etc. What we are seeing

is the result of many inputs that we cannot control, and we cannot really judge where those differences are coming from.

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Carlos Zorrinho (S&D). – In your opinion, is there a European pattern in this process, i.e. is

this essentially a European issue? What is more important – is it the regulatory framework, or is it the available technology? Is it the industry, which in financial terms attaches more

importance to some things than to others? Is it the market? Do European consumers not attach so much importance to environmental issues? Is it a matter of industry culture? Is there a pattern here? The research is extremely interesting and we are learning a lot from you and

your team. Do you believe that there is a European pattern here?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – I will say for sure that it is not a question of consumers, because

consumers are not presented with options. Every car that they buy today is a Euro 6 car and so, in principle, it complies with the regulations and it is a clean car. So consumers do not have the information to discriminate between what would be a clean diesel power and what

would be a dirty diesel car, so we cannot put the responsibility on them; it is more on the regulators and on the manufacturers.

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Karima Delli (Verts/ALE). – Thank you for your presentation, Mr Franco. I shall be very

brief. Do you not think that what is lacking in Europe is, in fact, what they have in the USA, namely such an agency – genuinely independent, with authority and resources, and genuinely

capable, with its unrestricted powers, of changing the game to some extent? Do you not think that we in the EU ought today to have some sort of European agency, particularly for vehicle testing, which would be genuinely independent and capable of checking on the work of the

Member States, and which, at the same time, could refocus and reinvigorate the automotive industry, particularly in terms of respecting the rules?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – Probably the consensus reply within the ICCT would be yes, that a central European agency or authority is needed. I do not know to what extent that is feasible or realistic, because there are 28 type approval authorities in place in Europe today. From the

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political point of view, I think it will take a lot of will and a lot of motivation to change and

get rid of that and to centralise everything into one European EPA, let’s say. There is a workaround, and the Commission is proposing something similar in proposing to focus on

harmonisation and to take an oversight role while keeping the fragmented authorities. In principle that could work. We should see what the final implementation looks like, but it could be a middle ground and it could be a way to have some of the strength of the US

approach while preserving the European structures, but that is still to be determined.

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Karima Delli (Verts/ALE). – You indicated just now that you were unconvinced about

clean diesel – and I approve because I too am unconvinced. So do you not think that what we actually need in response to the current issues is to place a stronger focus on public health – the health of our citizens – and to make that public-interest role part of the remit of such an

agency, giving it a focus on public health, as has been done successfully in the USA?

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Vicente Franco, ICCT. – Yes, the mandate of the EPA is to protect the environment and the

health of US citizens, and it is really good at that. I forgot the first part of the question, though I had an answer, I am sure!

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Chair. – Do not worry, it is 18.30 and we are all tired. It has been very interesting, and there

are still a lot of open question. I would very much like to thank Mr Franco for his lengthy answers to our well-based questions. If colleagues still have open questions to the ICCT, they can put these in written form and we will make sure that they get all the answers necessary.

The transcript of the meeting will be available, in English only, in ten days’ time. I would just like to remind you of the next meeting, which will be held on 28 April here in Brussels.

(The meeting closed at 18.30)