Euro 6 comes into force from today​​

From today all new cars that are sold in Europe must meet the latest EU emissions legislation – Euro 6. The EU has introduced these new regulations in a bid to lower emissions from vehicles, since 1992 the limits have slowly been getting tighter with Euro 6 being the strictest yet. 

Over the last 20 year the limit for nitrogen oxides (NOx) has been dramatically reduced for both petrol and diesel cars with the latter seeing a reduction of 84%. The new legislation will now see all new cars having to comply with these new rules on emissions. The result will see the levels of harmful emissions such as nitrogen oxide (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), and particulate matter (PM) reduce significantly in turn protecting our vulnerable environment.  

The new legislation which comes into force today has different requirements for petrol and diesel cars. For diesel cars the level of NOx allowed has dropped from 180mg/km to only 80mg/km, for petrol cars the limit will remain the same at 60mg/km.

The reason the NOx allowance for diesel cars has been reduced is that the EU want to cut down on NOx which has been discovered to be much more damaging to the environment than CO2. Diesel cars produce much higher levels of nitrogen oxides than petrol cars do which is the reason the new Euro 6 law has come into place.

Manufacturers will now have to invest more into diesel engine filter technology to reduce these emissions to meet the Euro 6 standard. The new laws on emission will be a selling point in the future for new cars as they could see fuel economy improve as well as reducing dangerous carbon emissions.