Ashley Sowerby, managing director at the fleet software specialist, said: “While fleets have generally been aware for some time that official emissions figures bear only a loose link to real-world performance, the scandal has inevitably increased interest in accuracy. 

“This is especially the case among fleets that have a strong interest in their environmental impact and where there is corporate interest in producing better quality information.

He added that there was a degree of annoyance among fleets at the way in which some manufacturers and governments had allowed official figures to remain inaccurate. 

“Fleets have worked very hard, often following government policies, to improve their performance in areas like CO2 output and fuel consumption. However, they have done this while being broadly aware that any official figures they were using were probably erroneous to a degree that made any measurement partially worthless. 

“This is an annoying and distressing position in which to be placed, purely because so much effort and investment has gone into working towards better results.

“It could be that, over time, to prevent a similar situation occurring in the future, fleets and technology providers find more ways of measuring real world performance.”

The fleet software specialist includes tools within its FleetWave software that allow CO2 output to be calculated from fuel use rather than using official figures.

Sowerby added: “Our tool only currently works for CO2 but our users certainly see wide variance for many models and manufacturers between official and real world figures. The ones who adopt the latter for their own measurements are, we believe, quite brave. It would be easy to stick to the official version and report much better performance.”