An open door for many
It is a study from two years ago that dieselers still like to quote: ‘New diesels make the air cleaner’. Diesels that meet the latest emission requirements would swallow the polluted outside air and blow out cleaner. This new research of The Real Urban Emissions (TRUE) contradicts this. They measured the emissions of 130,000 cars in Brussels to see how polluting they are. ‘It is not good news’, the organization reports, because many diesels are very polluting.
Diesels are more polluting than petrol cars
Only 12 percent of all measured cars are Euro 4 diesel cars, but this small group is responsible for 47 percent of particulate matter emissions and 26 percent of nitrogen oxide emissions. This group of diesels will therefore be banned from environmental zones in Brussels. Another striking conclusion was that even Euro 6d-Temp diesels emit over 60 percent more nitrogen oxides than petrol vehicles. So these are the diesels that, according to the previous research, would filter the air.
Another finding is that the particulate filters do not function in a small part (5 percent) of the diesels measured. The impact is large, because these vehicles would provide 90 percent of the particulate matter. On a positive note, the Euro 6d-Temp diesels emit 74 percent less than diesels with an older emission standard. But modern diesels are still not as clean as petrol cars.