The Volvo Group is the world’s largest manufacturer of heavy diesel engines for the truck industry. We have a large responsibility to reduce the negative environmental effects of the vehicles, and we accept this responsibility. We support demands by the world’s politicians that require us to fulfill environmental requirements, provided they are reasonably weighted. We have the knowledge to meet the demands that are imposed on us.
Since we are a global company, however, we need the same environmental requirements on our engines throughout the entire world in order to contribute as effectively as possible to a better environment.
Today, the requirements often vary, and we are forced to develop different technical solutions for different markets.
This incurs unnecessarily high costs for us, for our customers and for society in general. It is difficult to calculate exactly how much the costs increase, but as a benchmark the Volvo Group invested about EUR 80 million solely to develop engines to meet the US02 American standard. To meet different emission regulations, Volvo and its colleagues in the industry must invest even more money, funds that could be used instead to create engines with an even lower environmental impact.
We and our competitors agree that we need uniform regulations within three areas; fuel quality, after-treatment of emissions and test methods.
Diesel fuel with low sulphur content is required to reduce exhaust emissions to the proposed emission levels. We also need regulations that include a uniform global standard for fuel quality.
To fulfill future emission demands, some form of emission after-treatment is required. Under present conditions, public authorities in Europe and the US require different variations of after treatment. As a result, engine manufacturers are forced to develop two different technical solutions to achieve virtually the same result.
Government-imposed regulations and methods to determine if an engine fulfills the requirements also vary. Uniform regulations for certification would enable us to save time and money that could be used instead to improve our engines.
The UN has an organization based in Geneva, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, that formulates proposals for technical standards for the entire world. We believe their proposals should be used as the basis for decisions governing uniform global emission regulations.
2003-10-16