NEDC — the cycle Europe abandoned

The procedure dated from an era of different cars and different driving, and by the end of its life the gap between its figures and reality was wide enough to be a public scandal. It was replaced across the European Union by a more demanding procedure, phased in over several years.

Why it matters when buying

It matters mostly when buying used. A car certified under the old cycle carries figures that cannot be compared with a newer car’s figures, and the older number will always look better. During the transition years some documents carried both, and some carried a correlated value derived from one to satisfy tax rules written for the other — a construction that confused even dealers at the time.

The same trap recurs with Chinese models, because the old cycle was also used in China before the current one and still appears in older material and in the specifications of some grey-market cars. A figure quoted without naming its cycle should be treated as unusable rather than approximated.

Related: WLTP · CLTC · residual value