Makers ‘tricking’ motorists over fuel efficiency

Car manufacturers are using a range of tricks to pretend their vehicles use much less fuel and that they spew less polluting CO2 into the air than they actually do.

Fuel costs can be 50% more than a car owner has been led to believe by the makers, according to independent tests on vehicles carried out for consumers bodies.

German car-maker Volkswagen and Italian manufacturers Fiat are now being taken to court in Italy by car owners to get their money back.

Tricks manufacturers use to improve their ratings include: Over-inflating car tyres; removing side mirrors; sealing gaps around windows and doors; disconnecting the alternator; easing braking; reducing vehicle’s weight; and using special lubricants in tests to check how fuel-efficient they are.

However, even these adjustments did not account for the huge differences in the ways the cars performed when the tests were done according to the rules, said BEUC, the EU-wide consumers organisation.

The cheating is not limited to European manufacturers as US and South Korean makers have also been found to exaggerate their vehicles’ performance, with Hyundai paying $54.3m (€42m) to settle a law suit in the US.

Fuel consumption and CO2 emissions of the Volkswagen Golf 1.6 TDI was 50% more than the manufacturer claimed. On the basis of an average motorist driving 15,000km a year, motorists were paying more than €509 a year more for fuel than they would have expected.

The Fiat Panda 1.2 claims were not as wide of the truth, but fuel consumption was still 18% greater than advertised, according to the tests carried out by an independent laboratory for the Italian consumer organisation Altroconsumo.

Monique Goyens, head of BEUC said: “Consumers buying supposedly efficient cars are misled too often. If a car guzzles two litres more per 100 km than advertised, consumers pay the price for what is essentially a company’s green marketing trick.”

National revenues are also losing out as car tax in many countries is based on how polluting a vehicle is.

However, the information that must be posted on the windscreen of every new car to inform the buyer of the CO2 emissions also tells a lie, according to BEUC.

“It is making a shambles of judging the car industry’s contribution to carbon emissions and so undermines the EU’s climate targets,” said BEUC.

The tests are done according to EU rules laid down 40 years ago and were originally designed to test nitrogen dioxide emissions. They need to be changed to take account of a dramatically different generation of vehicles, BEUC says.

Luckily, the UN has adopted the Worldwide harmonised Light Vehicles Test Procedure that is expected to close many of the loopholes and BEUC says the EU should adopt and apply it by 2017.

However, the vehicle lobby, and especially the German car lobby, is particularly strong and can be expected to battle against any such change.