Proposed Amendments to the Vehicle Type Definitions for ECWVTA

Over the past year, the European Commission have been developing a draft Regulation amending the definitions of vehicle categories, vehicle types and kinds of bodywork contained within the European Community Whole Vehicle Type Approval (ECWVTA) Directive 2007/46/EC. Although the amendments contained in this draft Regulation may appear at first glance to be mainly administrative in nature, the effects of these changes are likely to have significant implications for virtually all users of the European type approval scheme.

The original draft Regulation, which was prepared by the European Commission in October 2009, was intended to address the following issues:

• To prevent abuse of the vehicle type definition by vehicle manufacturers seeking to avoid/delay the implementation of new legislative requirements to their vehicles.
• To prevent vehicle manufacturers from abusing the vehicle type definition to obtain multiple "small series" approvals for the same vehicle.
• To assist in the monitoring of the CO2 emissions of new vehicles, as required by EC Regulation No. 443/2009.

The original European Commission proposal proved to be highly contentious and, as the whole subject area was deemed to be controversial, the European Commission set up a specific sub-group to refine the draft Regulation. This sub-group included representatives from the individual EU Member States and from industry associations, and has met eight times over the past year. The final output from this sub-group is a version of the draft Regulation dated 9th August 2010. This latest version of the draft Regulation includes the following:

• Revised and more detailed definitions of a "vehicle type", a "variant" and a "version" for each category of vehicle.
• Revised and more detailed criteria for determining whether vehicles such as small vans, crew cab pick-ups and crew cab vans (combi's) are classified as M1 category vehicles or N1 category vehicles.
• Revisions to the criteria which a vehicle must comply with to be classified as an "off-road vehicle" and the introduction of specific procedure to checking compliance with these criteria.
• The introduction of new and revised bodywork codes.
• The introduction of requirements for a new type of "special purpose vehicle", namely "exceptional load transport trailers".

It is proposed that the requirements of this Regulation will apply to all new vehicle types from 29th October 2012, but that manufacturers can request early application of any of the provisions from the Regulation prior to that date.