ULEZ, LEZ & CAZ – Information on how clean air initiatives affect the Nissan Figaro

In the UK (and around the world) there is an initiative from the governments and local councils to improve air quality. There are now a number of schemes operating throughout the UK and the idea of this page is to summarise the current schemes in place and provide links and information on the compliance standards required.

Although there are currently only a handful of locations this initiative is growing fast!

At the time of writing (1st December 2022), the UK has the following clean air schemes:

Why does my Figaro show it’s Euro 4 compliant?
If the results show your Figaro is compliant, it could be that when the car was imported into the UK as a grey import, the information entered met Euro 4 standards. The reason for this is that they entered the following emissions CO Emissions of 75g/km and NOx emissions of 0.08g/km. This data is manually entered and not checked so any figures can be entered. We suspect that unscrupulous importers who are aware of the data required to gain compliance may have done this to make the car more appealing. If you refer to your V5C form you may see this entered on the second page under the V Exhaust section. We know of owners whose original compliance has now been overturned by TFL so although you may get away with it for now, at some point this may be flagged and changed.

How do we make the Nissan Figaro meet the required standard (Euro 4 NEDC test cycle)
There are a number of complexities to modifying a car built in 1991 and making it Euro 4 compliant. We contacted Tony Soper from testing experts UTAC Millbrook Proving Ground. They are an independent test laboratory that has an emissions testing facility.

UTAC Millbrook is an independent test laboratory accredited by the Department for Transport’s Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) to perform vehicle emissions testing in accordance with the Individual Vehicle Approval process, which allows registration of imported and low-volume vehicles. In this capacity, we are audited annually by the Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA). In addition, our emissions test facilities hold a VCA facility appraisal, and are a designated technical service for type approval purposes.

However, we are not directly accredited by Transport for London to provide emissions tests for the purposes of access to their low emissions zones, so any applicant would need to agree with TfL that they will accept a UTAC Millbrook test report as evidence of compliance to the required standard.

We can perform an emissions test and provide a report outlining the results.

For the ULEZ required standard, we would expect to perform the “Type I” test which is drawn from the emissions regulation, which is summarised below.

As an order of magnitude, you should budget £2500 for us to perform a single Type I test and provide a report. Depending on the results, you could need to repeat the test 3 times to get an aggregated pass However a vehicle that is designed to be compliant usually only requires one test. Applicants should contact us for a formal quotation if they wish to book a test slot.

Type I test Procedure :
1. Vehicle preparation
2. Vehicle pre-conditioning cycle
3. Overnight soak at 23°C
4. Cold start NEDC 1200s dynamometer test cycle

Vehicle Preparation
The vehicle will undergo a check to ensure its suitability for laboratory running. If any issues are discovered, any time and materials required to rectify them will be charged additionally to any quoted price. The vehicle will be prepared for chassis dynamometer testing, a thorough exhaust leak check will be conducted and tyre pressures checked and adjusted to the manufacturer’s values.

Vehicle Pre-conditioning Cycle and Soak
The vehicle will then be preconditioned on the chassis dyno over a “New European Drive Cycle” (NEDC) prior to the overnight soak.
The vehicle will be soaked under laboratory conditions at 23°C +/- 2°C for a minimum of 6 hours and until the bulk oil and coolant temperatures are within 2°C of the soak target.

Type I Test – NEDC
A single NEDC emissions test according to UNECE Regulation 83 will then be conducted. The test shall be performed from a cold start at nominally 23°C.
During each test, legislated emissions of HC, CO, CO and NOx will be reported using the dilute bag analysis method. From this, fuel consumption will be calculated via the carbon balance equation. PM and PN will be measured separately. The results shall be validated and passed to the customer within 48hrs of each test. Test results will be provided by way of a validated PDF summary.

Worldwide Emissions Standards 2022/2023
If you are interested in light-duty emissions, then the attached Delphi book is a good read Click here From this, you can see that there is more to the full EU emissions approval than just the Type I test, and the full suite of approval testing and documentation would indeed cost a lot more but the pollutant and CO2 levels are derived from the Type I test only

• Page 5 shows you the difference between the respective Euro levels, and the NEDC test cycle is explained on page 11
• Page 32 covers the Japanese standards, and if you look at page 35, you will see that the respective Japanese test cycles do not have the same profile or duration as the EU test cycle.

This means that there is a good chance that unless the Figaro was originally mapped by Nissan to control its emissions over the full 1200-second NEDC cycle as well as the Japanese cycles, then there is a good chance that it will not be compliant for Euro 4.

Mechanical changes required
In addition to the above, the mechanical issue of emission compliance requires an exhaust/catalytic converter to be fitted. That will bring the car into the correct emission bracket. Fitting and Parts costs are currently unknown.

Can Nissan help?
On Friday 9th December 2022 we contacted Nissan Japan UK for assistance

Unfortunately, the club take the position that unless we receive both financial and technical support we cannot proceed to resolve this issue.

Related posts:

ULEZ – Sadiq Khan announces expansion to London-wide areas from August 2023 Emissions – Nissan Figaro