The OCU wants the DGT environmental label allocation system to be reviewed for this reason

The OCU denounces that there are a series of vehicles that receive a better environmental label, but in reality they are more polluting than others with less valued labels.

Cars receive an assessment for their emissions as a whole and, depending on the assigned label, they will have a series of advantages or disadvantages, for example, when entering the large cities of our country, especially when low-emission zones are imposed. in most locations in the coming months.

However, the OCU complaint that a large part of the plug-in hybrid vehicles generate excessive polluting emissions and therefore should not carry the 0 labelso they urge the DGT to review this label award system for being unfair.

And it is that according to the OCU study, they show that of the 147 vehicles analyzed, some cars with the same environmental label have very different emission levelsspecifically they talk about the 0 label with plug-in hybrids and also microhybrids.

In regards to the plug-in hybrids, we observe that they have a 0 emissions label but that there are models with a very poor environmental assessment. Specifically, they say that 38% of the plug-in hybrids they have analyzed are highly polluting.

They add that the cars with the lowest marks fall into this category, and that they are large cars with very powerful engines that consume a lot and therefore also pollute a lot when they run on gasoline once they have exceeded 40 km of electric range they have on average.

On the other hand, they talk about microhybrids, where one in four contaminates more. They talk about the excessive emissions that are also common to the 25% of non-plug-in microhybrids with the ECO label, models whose emissions are not compensated by the 10% reduction in fuel in the city that their 48V electrical system facilitates.

Finally they also talk about the diesel and gasoline, among the models with a C label and a combustion engine, there are some with very low emissions. However, they say that in their tests up to 9% of these cars with a C label have obtained a good environmental assessment for their low level of emissions.

In this way the OCU denounces that the current system of awarding labels is unfair as it is based on engine technologies and not on actual vehicle emissions.

They comment that there are also no official public data on the actual emissions of pollutants that harm health, so the system favors some vehicles to the detriment of others.

They comment that this current system of labels conditions citizens’ access to restricted circulation areas in large cities, discriminating in this case against car owners who, although they pollute less, have a worse label.

In this way the OCU wants the system for awarding environmental labels to be reviewed so that cars are classified according to their real environmental impact.