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In the future, similar to passenger cars, newly registered European heavy duty vehicles shall be labelled with the fuel consumption in typical driving cycles, determined at standardised conditions. This shall improve the comparability of the vehicles and motivate manufacturers to apply more fuel-saving technology. Therefore, a multi-stage certification procedure has been developed by a consortium of European laboratories under the leadership of the Institute for Internal Combustion Engines and Thermodynamics of TU Graz. It is based on a simulative approach and consists of: On-road measurement of driving resistances; determination of drivetrain losses; power demand of engine auxiliaries and other consumers; generation of an engine fuel consumption map from the engine's type approval tests; development of several driving cycles, typical for different vehicle applications; and a proposal for a calculation method of fuel consumption.

Aerodynamic drag testing is a key component of the CO2 certification schemes for heavy-duty vehicles around the world. This paper presents and compares the regulatory approaches for measuring the drag coefficient of heavy-duty vehicles in Europe, which uses a constant-speed test, and in the United States and Canada, which use a coastdown test. Two European trucks and one North American truck were tested using the constant-speed and coastdown methods. When corrected to zero yaw angle, a difference of up to 12% was observed in the measured drag coefficients from the US coastdown procedure and the EU constant-speed test.