A Review on Real Drive Emission (RDE) in India

Indian automobile industry is set to witness the biggest emission reforms of the last two decades with the implementation of BS6 emission norms from 1st April 2020 and Real Driving Emissions (RDE) from 1st April 2023. However, there are still lot of unanswered questions regarding test procedure of RDE for India. For India, adopting European RDE test procedure as it may be challenge because of the significant differences between India and Europe in terms of weather, geography, demography, road infrastructure, driving behavior and fuel quality. In India, vehicle technology is changing rapidly with changes in fuel quality, exhaust treatment systems of the internal combustion engines (ICE), electrification of vehicle segments and steps towards hydrogen-powered vehicles. But the current and future batches of ICE vehicles are likely to have a substantial share in on-road fleet till 2040, if not beyond. This not only requires substantial tightening of the emissions standards but also modification of technical parameters for testing of vehicles to reduce the emissions in the real world. This paper discusses details about 1) Why emission testing method matters? 2 What is Real Drive Emission (RDE) 3) How do RDE tests work in practice? 4) What equipment is needed for RDE? 5) What are 'Conformity Factors'? 6) Considerations for more robust RDE test.