ICCT publishes further technology benefit and cost curve data to inform EU Cars and CO2 debate
Mon 12 November 2012
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The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) has published a summary of the methodology used to develop technology benefit and cost curves applicable for EU light-duty vehicles in 2020–2025.The ICCT says that meeting the planned 95 g/km target for passenger vehicles by 2020 will require additional investments of approximately €1000 per vehicle, and about €500 per vehicle to meet the 147 g/km target for light-commercial vehicles by 2020. It says the methodology is also applicable to other regions of the World.
Explaining the importance of the report, ICCT says that obtaining comprehensive and transparent data on vehicle technologies, their effect on CO2 emissions, and their costs are crucial for any fact-based discussion with stakeholders.
In the past, the usual approach was to carry out interviews with vehicle manufacturers and suppliers or their associations and to ask about their view on future reduction potentials and costs. However, for a variety of reasons (not least supplier confidentiality), there is a significant risk that the results of such an industry consultation will lead to an over-estimation of compliance costs.
ICCT says that for the recently adopted US regulations on light-duty vehicle CO2 emissions the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California Air Resources Board (CARB) made use of an entirely different method. They asked the UK based engineering consultancy Ricardo to carry out in-depth vehicle computer simulations of specific technology packages to determine energy consumption and CO2 emission levels of future vehicles.
At the same time FEV, a spin-off of the prestigious University of Aachen in Germany, was asked to carry out a so-called tear-down cost assessment. A tear-down assessment involves taking apart a new technology until you literally have all the nuts and bolts laying on tables around you. The pieces are then compared to similar components without the new technology, and those parts that are different are then analyzed in great detail to arrive at an estimate for technology costs, assuming high-volume production.
The US regulatory agencies then combined the results of the Ricardo and FEV work to arrive at cost curves that show how much CO2 reduction can be achieved by deploying a certain set of technologies at a given cost.
This approach allows for a very transparent analysis and for more realistic results than does the industry consultation approach. In fact, the combination of vehicle computer simulations and tear-down cost assessments is used by the automotive industry itself, ICCT says.
The ICCT study uses simulation modeling data provided by Ricardo which is combined with technology cost data to generate CO2 cost curves for five EU vehicle classes (namely, the B, C, D, small N1, and large N1 classes).
The primary source of the technology cost data is a study carried out for the ICCT by FEV, Inc. specifically for this exercise. Setting effective CO2 standards for vehicles requires knowledge of the technical potential and the associated costs.
The ICCT is currently working on a series of working papers to summarize the Ricardo and FEV work and develop EU cost curves based on the results. Based on the results so far, ICCT comes to the conclusion that meeting the envisioned 95 g/km target for passenger vehicles by 2020 will require additional investments of approximately €1000 per vehicle, and about €500 per vehicle to meet the 147 g/km target for light-commercial vehicles by 2020.
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