Introduction by coordinator Simon Edwards – Newsletter 2

Gasoline engined passenger cars today have higher fuel consumption than their diesel counterparts: improvements in gasoline engines have an intrinsically greater potential to lower vehicle parc CO₂ emissions, especially since there are also many more gasoline vehicles and the share of new diesel engined passenger car sales in Europe is currently falling. Furthermore, the vehicles that are the focus of the PaREGEn project, namely mid to premium sized cars, are those with the higher annual mileages. Finally, the engine developments within the PaREGEn project are inherently complimentary to electric hybridization of the vehicle powertrain. Therefore, the engine concepts that have been under test this last year and are targeted to reduce the CO₂ emissions by 15%, are most relevant.

However, local air quality issues rightly remain a concern and, whilst reductions of particle matter concentrations have been successfully achieved to date, there is a possibility that particles smaller than those currently measured in the legislative vehicle tests may not be so reduced in number. Hence, the PaREGEn project has been evaluating the potential of new, gasoline engine particulate filters, to complement the existing catalyst technologies. And, looking towards the longer term, the project’s successful work with optical engine measurement techniques and new simulation tools, will give engineers the means to design and develop low “at source” particle engines in the years to come.

I hope you enjoy reading this second newsletter: that you gain further insight into the potential of Particle Reduced, Efficient Gasoline Engines for the near future.