Appendix 2 ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE VEHICLE FAMILY

The OBD family means a manufacturer’s grouping of vehicles which, through their design, are expected to have similar exhaust emission and OBD system characteristics. Each engine of this family shall comply with the requirements of this Regulation.

The OBD family may be defined by basic design parameters which shall be common to vehicles within the family. In some cases there may be interaction of parameters. These effects shall also be taken into consideration to ensure that only vehicles with similar exhaust emission characteristics are included within an OBD family.

To this end, those vehicle types whose parameters described below are identical are considered to belong to the same engine/emission control/OBD system combination.

• Engine:

  • combustion process (i.e. positive-ignition/compression-ignition, two stroke/four stroke/rotary),

  • method of engine fuelling (i.e. single or multi-point fuel injection),

  • fuel type (i.e. petrol, diesel, flex fuel petrol/ethanol, flex fuel diesel/biodiesel, NG/biomethane, LPG, bi fuel petrol/NG/biomethane, bi fuel petrol/LPG),

• Emission control system:

  • type of catalytic converter (i. e. oxidation, three-way, heated catalyst, SCR, other),

  • type of particulate trap,

  • secondary air injection (i.e. with or without),

  • exhaust gas recirculation (i.e. with or without),

• OBD parts and functioning:

  • the methods of OBD functional monitoring, malfunction detection and malfunction indication to the vehicle driver.