What's the news?
If you saw the recent announcement from Transport & Environment (T&E), which stated that direct-injection petrol engines can generate as much soot and particulates as a diesel motor, then this news from Wolfsburg should be of interest: starting from 2017, the Volkswagen Group - currently on shaky ground regarding emissions and customer confidence - will demonstrate its ecological sensibility by fitting all its TSI and TFSI direct-injection petrol engines with Gasoline Particulate Filters (GPF).
Yes, that's the whole Volkswagen Group, so Audi, SEAT, Skoda and presumably even the likes of Bentley, Porsche, Bugatti and Lamborghini will fall under this programme, with Volkswagen claiming emissions of fine soot particles from its petrol vehicles should be cut by up to 90 per cent as a result.
First to benefit from the GPF - a direct analogue of the same technology in diesel engines, known as the Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) - will be the 2017 1.4-litre TSI in the Volkswagen Tiguan and the 2.0 TFSI in the Audi A5. Further models will follow as new models and engine generations are brought on-stream, until Volkswagen Group reckons that by 2022, up to seven million cars built annually will feature a GPF.
Dr Ulrich Eichhorn, head of Group Research and Development, said: "Following increases in efficiency and lower CO2 output, we are now bringing about a sustained reduction in the emission levels of our modern petrol engines by fitting particulate filters as standard."
That should please environmental pressure group T&E, which says it has long been campaigning for stricter standards on petrol emissions for some time now.
Anything else?
Volkswagen Group, said to be the cleanest for EU6 emissions according to the EQUA Air Quality Index drawn up by London-based Emission Analytics, says despite the cost and complexity of the technology, it remains committed to further cleaning up its diesel cars too, through the use of selective catalytic reduction (SCR). Dr Eichhorn added: "In the future, all models will be equipped with the latest and most efficient SCR catalytic converter technology."