Jaguar Land Rover has become the first car manufacturer to use the AIR Index to show ‘real-world’ clean air emissions.
JLR are keen to demonstrate that their diesel engines can set a green standard, despite the governments and media demonising the fuel option.
The AIR Index is an independent air cleanliness organisation who aim to show how harmful cars can be in real city driving conditions, as opposed to the laboratory conditions which all cars must adhere to on the Euro 6 emissions standard.
The Jaguar E-Pace HSE 2.0 180hp, Land Rover Discovery Sport 2.0 180hp and Range Rover Evoque TD4 2.0 180hp were all put forward for the independent testing and all three received an ‘A’ rating from AIR Index.
Speaking about the tests, Massimo Fedeli, founder of AIR Index said: “One of the key things to observe from this set of AIR Index ratings is that perceptions of the emissions produced by particular vehicle types, such as SUVs, can be very misleading. In fact, Jaguar’s E-PACE and Land Rover’s Range Rover Evoque are amongst the cleanest cars on sale of any type, not just vehicles within the SUV segment. The perfect example is the Land Rover Discovery, which produced NOx emissions 20 times lower than a diesel Renault Clio supermini.”
For Jaguar Land Rover it is a huge PR boost for a fuel option which has had some real bad headlines in recent years with Volkswagen's Dieselgate scandal hitting the entire industry hard.
“The performance of our vehicles on the AIR Index reflects Jaguar Land Rover’s investment in class-leading technology and its hard-working, talented engineers,” said JLR MD, Rawdon Glover. “There are some stand-out results here with the superb performance of our new Jaguar SUVs worthy of specific praise, disproving the notion that all diesel SUVs are ‘dirty’.”