The Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU) has asked the General Directorate of Traffic (DGT) to change the criteria for granting environmental labels for vehicles, considering them unfair. It is not the first time that this entity requests it. Although the head of Traffic, Pere Navarro, announced that work was being done on updating the badge system, to date there have been no changes, and there will not be any in the short term.
So the OCU’s request for the modification to be made before the end of this year is very unlikely to be fulfilled, if we take into account that Navarro himself said that it would not become effective in this legislature, and currently We have a functioning Government, waiting to see if Pedro Sánchez gets the support to be president again or new elections are called.
The OCU’s rush to change the label catalog responds to the upcoming entry into force of new low emissions zones (ZBE) in Spanish municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants. And the screening of vehicles that can circulate through them is based on the DGT’s environmental badges. Theoretically, these areas should be activated on January 1, although it is not clear that this will be the case, if we look at the interactive map that the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge has created to offer updated information to citizens about the municipalities with ZBE. active and their restrictions.
And why does the consumer organization believe that the DGT labels are unfair? The reason is that it does not take into account the actual emissions of the vehicles and is only based on the technology used in their propulsion system. This generates paradoxical situations. For example, it may be the case that a very powerful micro-hybrid car (Mild Hybrid) receives the Eco badge for the mere fact of incorporating a 48-volt electric generator, despite the fact that its emissions are much higher than those of a gasoline distinguished with the C sticker. Faced with this reality, numerous brands took the opportunity to incorporate this solution into their cars with a very low development cost.
On the other hand, it is not guaranteed that users of plug-in hybrid cars with an electric range of more than 40 kilometers and who enjoy the advantages of the 0 Emissions badge – the same as that of 100% electric vehicles – will use ecological of your car; That is, they must always have it charged to circulate for as long as possible without contaminating.
To demonstrate that the criteria for granting environmental labels of the DGT is unfair, the OCU has prepared several reports in which it compared the level of emissions of vehicles with different labels, and now it has just made public another work in which it takes a step further and, based on data collected by Green NCAP, presents the emissions during the life cycle of a vehicle from its manufacture, use, maintenance and recycling 16 years later after traveling 240,000 kilometers. Their conclusion is clear: the best-selling combustion engine cars have similar or even lower levels of emissions during their life cycle than the majority of ‘Mild hybrid’ and the largest and most powerful hybrids, with Eco or Zero emissions labels. .
For example, the best-selling passenger car with a diesel engine in Spain during the first half of 2023 was the Audi Q3 (Label C), which in its 35 TDI version emits 48.9 tons of CO2; the Jeep Wrangler 4xe 280 kW plug-in hybrid (Zero Label), which adds 54.8 tons of CO2; and the Audi RS Q8 Mild hybrid (Eco Label), which reaches 106.8 tons of CO2.
The organization considers that, although the DGT’s current environmental label system “served in its day” to “raise awareness that it is possible to choose between more or less polluting cars,” it is currently “outdated,” since “The only” engines that “guarantee lower emissions” are those of 100% electric vehicles, convinced that, for the rest, “the emissions measured in their approval should be assessed.”
