VCD Environmental List Relies On Positive List Instead Of Ranking

2023 Author: Eric Donovan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 05:39

The diesel scandal also caused the ecological traffic club Germany (VCD) to rethink. Instead of a fixed ranking, the environmental list is becoming a buying advisor for the currently cleanest cars.

After a one-year break, the ecological traffic club Germany (VCD) is back with its traditional environmental list. While the club did not want to create a ranking in 2016, one year after the diesel scandal became known, the second year after "Dieselgate" has initiated a rethink at the traffic club.

This VCD car environmental list is a new beginning: a positive list and transparency list that only includes cars that will still be allowed to drive in every environmental zone in a few years, that are efficient and that emit comparatively little greenhouse gas CO2 - not only in the laboratory, but also on the street,”says Gerd Lottsiepen, transport policy spokesman for the VCD.

Fuel monitor as a source of consumption information

Thus, the traffic club particularly recommends gasoline hybrid and natural gas vehicles or small, efficient gasoline vehicles. The VCD thinks a total of 34 cars are worth buying, including six gasoline hybrids such as the Toyota Prius, five natural gas cars such as the Eco-Up from VW, the Citroen C1 VTi 68 Stop & Start as one of 13 gasoline-powered vehicles and electric cars such as the BMW i3. In contrast, plug-in hybrids were not included in the list, as were vehicles with LPG.

Diesel vehicles are also completely absent - not surprisingly - as hardly any car manufacturer has been able to prove that the nitrogen oxide limit values of its cars are also complied with on the road. At the same time, the club condemns the manufacturers' lack of transparency. For the VCD environmental list, for example, in addition to the measurements of the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC), which has now expired, the manufacturers should also provide data from road measurements, which the manufacturers have only been providing since September 1, 2017, but since April last year the values in such a way must determine the monitoring phase mentioned. The VCD made use of the data from the online tool spritmonitor.de, which the International Council of Clean Transportation (ICCT) itself uses for the annual studies, or the Emissions Control Institute.

34 recommended vehicles

“Even in the second year of the emissions scandal, the car companies are not taking their announced transparency offensive seriously. They stonewall when it comes to releasing the data from road measurements. At the IAA in Frankfurt you will almost only be presenting vehicles that have been registered according to the old, lax rules and will be sold as new next year. For us, that means: The car manufacturers are failing to recognize the signs of the times and are continuing to gamble away the trust of consumers, says VCD traffic expert Michael Müller-Görnert.

Without the manufacturer's data on pollutant emissions and fuel consumption on the road, the VCD would forego the usual comprehensive ranking in several categories, so that in the end only 34 vehicles remained, which the VCD can recommend to consumers, according to Lottsiepen.

“The decision to buy a car in times of the emissions scandal should be carefully considered. Anyone who scraps their Euro 4 diesel for a Euro 6 diesel may soon no longer be able to drive the new car into the environmental zone. It is a scandal that Euro 6 diesels are still permitted today, which many times exceed the statutory nitrogen oxide limit for road measurements. We strongly recommend that you only buy an environmentally sound car. The good news is: Consumers are on the safe side with the cars that we have selected for the car environmental list.”(AG / TF)