Starting in 2021, the Commission of the European Union will be required to monitor the consumption of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles. Manufacturers will be required to provide recorded consumption data and provide it to the Commission for each vehicle individually, which only increases the pressure on companies to produce as economical vehicles as possible, and would be demonstrable not only during the conduct of prescribed tests but also in daily life.

The provision made is part of the procedures prescribed by the WLTP tests. The aim of the European Commission is to make sure that the fuel consumption figures provided by manufacturers will be very approximate, if not identical to those obtained in real conditions.

According to research carried out by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), the consumption of new passenger cars in daily use is on average 39% higher than that obtained from manufacturers’ testing.

A prerequisite for providing the data provided by the manufacturer is the presence of an On-Board Fuel Consumption Meter (OBFCM) on the vehicle itself. The computer program is responsible for recording the fuel consumption by the vehicle, whether it is a conventional, hybrid or electric vehicle.