PERSPECTIVES ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE AUTOMOBILE ...

Automotive Industry in China
a) The United Nation Economic Commission for Europe (UN
ECE) regulations
UN ECE is an organizational part of the United Nations. 17 Members are EU member
states plus many other countries such as Japan, U.S., Canada, Israel, South Africa,
Russia, Belarus and Turkey. In total there are 56 member States. Thus, testing
according to ECE regulations opens the gate to the worldwide markets and it is easier
to meet because of a broader acceptance of approved components.
b) European Community Whole Vehicle Type Approval
(EWVTA) 18
The European Community Whole Vehicle Type-Approval (EWVTA) system applies
to passenger cars since January 1998 19 . As a result, this category of vehicles (called
M1 20 ) must comply with all the relevant European Community (EC) type-approval
directives in order to be sold in the market. In Annex X we can find the List of
Applicable Directives to get the Type Approval.
EWVTA System allows manufacturers to have a vehicle "type" approved in one
Member State and then be able to market the vehicle in all other Member States
without further tests.
Once the Type approval is granted, the approval authority of each Member State must
also send to the approval authority of the other Member States a copy of the vehicle
type-approval certificate for each vehicle type which it has approved, refused to
approve or withdrawn.
In the Figure below we can see which are the steps to get the homologation for
Europe through the EU directives:
17 The UN ECE secretariat headquarters is in Geneva, Switzerland.
18 “LegalRequirements. EU vs USA Homologation” Idiada information.
19 Some sources say this law applies on mandatory bases since 1998. In other hand we have the
information that cars that don’t have any European homologation can be driven in Germany, Belgium,
Check, Republic, Latvian, Lithuania and Estonia. It could be possible that these cars are not
accomplishing the European legislation.
20 Vehicles used for the carriage of passengers which have no more than eight seats, in addition to the
driver’s seat. This includes both, small minibuses and regular passenger cars.
Port of Barcelona Chair of Logistics 24