In this work comparisons between American and European emissions regulations, and corresponding exhaust emissions measurement procedures, were drawn. The goal was to evaluate, comparatively, their respective levels of severity in some historical stages of their development.
Four former stages were studied from bibliography and they concerned test programs carried out in 1990, 1995 and 2000 (two of them). The last one, called “GPRT”, started in 2000 and concluded in 2001, was specially designed to test some vehicles developed for the Brazilian market and using Brazilian ethanol containing gasoline (E22).
American and European driving cycles were also compared and the influence of their driving pattern on the magnitude of the three pollutants measured (HC, CO and NOx) was studied.
Final conclusion of this work was that American and European methodologies are extremely coherent and that they classify exhaust emissions levels of different vehicles in a very similar way.