The fact that many cars emit more pollutants when driving than permitted by the type certificate has now been judicially clarified. However, significantly higher emissions are also increasingly becoming a problem for heavy goods vehicles (lorries). However, the reasons for this are not incorrect information from the manufacturers, but the circumvention of the computer control by the vehicle operators. This is the conclusion reached by measurements by the Emissions Control Institute of German Environmental Aid on behalf of the Chamber of Labor (AK).
In modern trucks, an on-board computer should drastically throttle the engine power if the emission values are no longer met. However, there is software that manipulates a truck’s on-board computer and makes it believe that the emissions are okay. This means that vehicle owners can save themselves both due repairs to the exhaust system and the addition of urea (AdBlue) for exhaust gas cleaning. According to AK, tests with a measuring vehicle that follows the exhaust plume of a truck for a long time have shown that a third of the most modern trucks (Euro VI) and half of the slightly older ones (Euro V) clearly exceed the emission limit values. 118 trucks were measured on Austrian, German and Slovakian motorways.
Franz Greil from the AK pointed out that it was very difficult for police officers to prove software manipulation during roadside checks: They could also not issue any fines. According to the study by the AK, the manipulations burden the environment on the one hand and are expensive on the other. Since the polluters among the measured trucks massively exceed the limit values, the test results extrapolated to the entire truck fleet mean a doubling of nitrogen oxide emissions from trucks Trucks would have been shown to be cleaner than they are.
Are foreign trucks to blame?
For Alexander Klacska, chairman of the federal division of transport and traffic in the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, foreign vehicles are primarily the problem. There are often trucks with non-Austrian license plates “who like to manipulate”. Austrian vehicles are checked so frequently that manipulation can be largely ruled out. These are not only checked once a year in the workshop, but also disproportionately often on the streets.
Source: Nachrichten
