The Implementing Act details the technical procedures for in-service verification tests in heavy duty vehicles. It follows a related regulation published on 8 February 2024, outlining the guiding principles and criteria for those tests (Delegated Act).
This “in-service verification” for heavy-duty vehicles is a new procedure which aims to make sure that the official CO2 emission values, provided in the vehicles’ customer information files issued by vehicle manufacturers, are correct and correspond to actual emissions when vehicles are on the road.
Next steps
Beginning from July 2025, each year, national type-approval authorities will test a sample of vehicles that are on the road in order to check that their real CO2 emissions correspond to official values. Authorities will also have to check that vehicles’ performance during certification tests has not been artificially modified.
National authorities will then publish their findings and report them to the Commission. Should there be deviations, the Commission will recalculate the average specific CO2 emissions of the concerned manufacturers to check whether they are complying with their emission targets.
Background
Lorries, buses and coaches are responsible for over 6% of total EU emissions of CO2. Introduced in 2019 as part of the first-ever EU-wide CO2 emission performance standards Regulation for heavy-duty vehicles, the verification of CO2 emissions for vehicles on the road comes as a result of the entry into force of that regulation and aims to enhance the reliability of laboratory-based emission testing.
On 8 February 2024, the Commission adopted a Delegated Regulation outlining guiding principles and criteria for verifying CO2 emissions and fuel consumption values of heavy-duty vehicles in service. Following endorsement by the Climate Change Committee, the Commission also adopted the associated Implementing Regulation on 13 January 2025, detailing procedures for in-service verification tests to be conducted by national type-approval authorities.
Now, following the entry into force of this regulation, the first annual testing campaign for in-service verification of heavy-duty vehicles will have to be executed from July 2025.
Related Pages
