The role of market and technical downsizing in reducing carbon emissions from the Swedish new car fleet

Frances Sprei and Sten Karlsson, Physical Resource Theory, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Keywords

Swedish new cars, fuel consumption, market downsizing, technical downsizing, maximum specific torque and power, gearshift, turbo and compressor chargers

Abstract

Doubts have been raised on whether the car industry will manage to reach the goal set by the Voluntary Agreement with the European Commission, unless tougher measures are taken to reduce CO2 emissions. Taking a stance from the concept of downsizing we study the historical development of two strategies: first shifting the market towards smaller cars, market downsizing; second a technical downsizing, i.e. technical improvements that have enabled a reduction of engine size. We focus on the Swedish new car market from 1975 to 2002. Analysis is done by combining sales statistics with databases over car model parameters. The development of the top and bottom 10 and 20 percent of the car market of various parameters point to an increased differentiation, still the market share of small models remains low. We identify the potential for downsizing created by increase of maximum specific torque and power and conclude that these have enabled the cylinder volume to stabilize around two litres. Increase in engine size has also partly been dampened by the utilization of turbo or compressor charging. The potential savings of fuel use presented by the introduction of a sixth gear in manual gearboxes has not materialized since gearshifts have not systematically been used to lower engine speed. We conclude that there are few signs of a downsizing in the Swedish new car fleet. From a market perspective larger cars are still dominant and the technical potentials to reduce engine size have not been harnessed.

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