The Volvo Group is the world's largest manufacturer of heavy diesel engines for the truck industry. We have a large responsibility to reduce the negative environmental effects of the vehicles, and we accept this responsibility. We support demands by the world's politicians that require us to fulfill environmental requirements, provided they are reasonably weighted. We have the knowledge to meet the demands that are imposed on us.
Since we are a global company, however, we need the same environmental requirements on our engines throughout the entire world in order to contribute as effectively as possible to a better environment.
Today, the requirements often vary, and we are forced to develop different technical solutions for different markets.
This incurs unnecessarily high costs for us, for our customers and for society in general. It is difficult to calculate exactly how much the costs increase, but as a benchmark the Volvo Group invested about EUR 80 million solely to develop engines to meet the US02 American standard. To meet different emission regulations, Volvo and its colleagues in the industry must invest even more money, funds that could be used instead to create engines with an even lower environmental impact.