Mr. Robert AinsworthTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport what research has been undertaken to evaluate the performance of catalytic converters in a typical urban driving situation in Britain; and whether the reductions in emissions have been quantified.
§ Mr. KeyThe Department has a number of research programmes on vehicles emissions which include analysis of catalyst cars. Recent unpublished work at the Warren Spring Laboratory, has compared the emission performance of catalyst-equipped cars against non-catalyst cars, for an equal mix of hot start and normal ambient cold start operation, over actual urban road driving and over dynamometer driving cycles that simulate typical urban driving. The results show, on average, that a catalyst equipped car reduces carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen by 76 per cent., 81 per cent., and 77 per cent. respectively over an equivalent non-catalyst car over a typical journey length of 4 km. Similar research carried out under the EU Drive programme, but under hot starting conditions only, shows reductions of 77 per cent., 90 per cent. and 85 per cent. respectively for the same pollutants.