Jaguar Land Rover use AIR Index Testing to PROVE low diesel emissions

Jaguar Land Rover has turned to independent tests from the AIR Index to prove that its latest diesel engines are truly low emission.

You could argue that the VW Dieselgate scandal has had a bigger impact on car makers other than Volkswagen as the furore over fiddled emissions tests on diesel cars started to turn the car buying public, and tax inflicting governments, off diesel engines as the Holy Grail of clean air.

We’ve banged on for a decade about how NOx and particulate emissions from diesels are far more harmful than CO2, and we also started to discover how big a difference there has been between real-world and lab tests for emissions.

Add all that together and it’s no big surprise that VW is reinventing itself as a maker of fluffy green EVs, and other makers, and especially Jaguar Land Rover, are struggling with diesel sales as a result.

That’s left Jaguar Land Rover with a big hole in sales (although there are other issues – like China sales falling through the floor), and although new petrol and hybrid models will help JLR turn sales around, they really need to convince the public that diesel is still a viable choice.

So they’ve turned to independent emissions testing for their latest diesels, submitting cars to AIR Index which goes out with at least two different cars over three separate tests, including at least five 10km trips on proper roads, using portable emissions measuring system equipment.

The results so far show the Jaguar E-Pace HSE diesel emitting just 14mg/km of NOx, the Land Rover Discovery Sport 2.0 litre diesel just 34mg/km, the Range Rover Evoque TD4 17mg/km and the Land Rover Discovery 3.0 TD6 HSE only 33mg/km. All well below the official NOx limit of 80mg/km.

Massimo Fedeli, founder of AIR Index, said:

One of the key things to observe from this set of AIR Index ratings is that perceptions of the emissions produced by particular vehicle types, such as SUVs, can be very misleading. In fact, Jaguar’s E-PACE and Land Rover’s Range Rover Evoque are amongst the cleanest cars on sale of any type, not just vehicles within the SUV segment. The perfect example is the Land Rover Discovery, which produced NOx emissions 20 times lower than a diesel Renault Clio supermini.

It’s a strong pitch to redeem modern diesel engines as the default choice for many drivers. But is it too late?