Due to the pollution produced by road traffic, more and more attempts are being made to counteract its effects in every possible way. One of these ways is to legislate to ensure that newly manufactured vehicles meet the standards considered necessary to reduce pollution from their use. In this context, one of the most important regulatory frameworks, at least in the European Union, are the Euro regulations that regulate the type of pollution that a vehicle manufactured and sold in this territory produces or does not produce. In fact, depending on the type of regulations that each vehicle complies with, we can find passenger cars that can circulate through certain spaces, in certain circumstances and others that cannot.
What are the Euro regulations in vehicles?
It is popularly known as Euro regulation to the regulation of the European Union that deals with regulating and classifying the characteristics related to the pollution produced by a motor vehicle.
In this sense, these regulations have been tightening as the years have gone by with the aim of reducing the impact of polluting and greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere and, today, we can find different Euro standards that they are applied in different situations depending on the characteristics of the vehicle, such as whether it is a passenger car or an industrial vehicle, as well as whether it is a vehicle that runs on gasoline or diesel.
How to know the Euro regulations that my car complies with
In response to your main question, the main way we recommend on how to find out which Euro regulations my car complies with is by taking the year of manufacture as a reference, since the Euro regulations are always applied in the present and not retroactively. In other words, a vehicle that has an old Euro regulation can continue to circulate without problems, but a newly manufactured vehicle must always comply with the most up-to-date Euro regulation in force. In this way, depending on the year of manufacture, we can get an idea of the type of regulations to which a car belongs.
In this way, we can take the following table as a reference when it comes to passenger cars:
- Euro 1: July 1992
- Euro 2: January 1996
- Euro 3: January 2000
- Euro4: January 2005
- Euro5: September 2009
- Euro6: September 2014
One of the most important aspects that we have to take into account when considering one regulation or another is the difference between gasoline and diesel vehicles. Although, as we can see in the table above, the regulations apply at the same time to all passenger cars, regardless of the type of fuel they use, it is important to know that there are differences between one and the other.
In this way, the same regulation makes a distinction between the number of gases that a car can emit depending on whether it is a gasoline or a diesel. For example, if we take the Euro 6 standard of September 2014 as a reference, we will see that the amount of carbon monoxide (CO) that a diesel vehicle can emit is only 0.50 g/km, while in the case of vehicles to gasoline, with this same norm, they could emit up to 1.0 g/km, that is, twice as much.
Why are European standards for the reduction of polluting gases important?
It must be borne in mind that this type of regulation obliges manufacturers to make vehicles that are much more respectful of the environment and human health itself. Polluting emissions from gasoline and diesel vehicles not only negatively affect climate change by constituting greenhouse gases. But they are also related to a multitude of chronic diseases that can range from asthma to some of the most dangerous cancers, such as lung or laryngeal cancers. For this reason, it is important that the regulation and development of vehicles tend to reduce the emission of this type of harmful and highly harmful gases.
Although the best-known gas of all when it comes to promoting the greenhouse effect is carbon dioxide (CO2), motor vehicles emit many more gases than just carbon dioxide. In fact, some of the most harmful and regulated by the different Euro regulations are nitrogen oxides (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO). In addition, European standards also regulate hydrocarbon gas (HC) emissions, so, as you can see, it is a fairly complete and strict regulation in this regard.
