Two-Wheeled Urban Vehicles—A Review of Emissions Test Regulations and Literature

Abstract

Two-wheeled vehicles, due to their population, constitute a significant share of road vehicles in Europe. Therefore, this article presents an overview and analysis of the applicable legal regulations regarding two-wheeled vehicle engines in terms of toxic exhaust emission tests. For the correct interpretation of emission standards, the authors of this work made the necessary analysis of the categorization of two-wheeled vehicles based on Polish law and the criteria of European regulations. The presented analysis concerns not only the current regulations, but also their development trends over the years. These considerations are supplemented with a literature review, which includes the problems of the ecology, energy consumption and construction of the considered group of vehicles. The work presented in this article also concerns the assessment of the conditions for conducting tests on objects belonging to category L in laboratory conditions on chassis dynamometers. On this basis, considerations were made to evaluate the currently applicable WMTC (World Motorcycle Test Cycle) test by comparing it with the actual operation of two-wheeled vehicles. This resulted in the formulation of conclusions regarding the need to introduce procedures for testing pollutant emissions in road conditions in the approval process.