Kg CO₂ per litre of petrol

If you burn a litre of diesel this will produce 2.6391 kgs of carbon dioxide. Petrol has a lower carbon content and so produces 2.3035 kgs of CO₂. The precise figures depend on the quality of the fuel. Since fuel weighs less than a kilogram per litre, it is interesting to see how the weight of emissions is multiplied by the addition of oxygen. The tables below show how the official test figures for CO₂ emissions and combined MPG can be equated to see how individual vehicles perform in terms of CO₂ per litre. Some cars appear to do better than the standard chemistry would suggest, whereas others do worse. The official tests measure exhaust gases only and then calculate the fuel consumption. So these figures show how far off the recording of test results can be due to errors, rounding differences, and the leeway of around 4% given to manufacturers to decide on which fuel consumption figure to use.

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