Fuel: harmonized signage at service stations across Europe
What does NF EN 16942 recommend?
It offers distributors a range of pictograms in a precise color code (black on white or silver background), font (Arial), shape, size and symbolism. It specifies, for example, a minimum diagonal size of 13 mm, with an outer line thickness of 1.4 points for affixing to the pump nozzle, the vehicle and the vehicle manual. For gasoline-type fuels, which inherit a circled pictogram, the symbol plays on the maximum ethanol content. Thus, SP95 and SP98, which in France contain 5% ethanol in standard blends, become E5; SP 95-E10 becomes E10. The logic goes on and on: E85 for flexfuel vehicles, and E100 one day.
What does it change at service stations?
It completes and harmonizes the information given to motorists, whether they usually fill up in Spain, France or Sweden, or in an EU member state within the European Economic Area (Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, etc.). Please note: the standard applies to the graphic representation of the fuel, not to its composition. Technical specifications, test methods and approval procedures are covered in other standards. The proposed pictograms can coexist with existing names and color codes, opening the door to dual display.
Why now?
Because this request to harmonize and better graphically represent information emanated from a European directive, Directive 2014/94/EU of October 22, 2014, whose transposition decree in France, but above all the resulting orders (signed by the DGCCRF), set a deadline of October 12, 2018. This directive deals exclusively with the deployment of alternative fuel infrastructure. However, in Article 7, it argues that in order to find one’s way around all these new fuels, it is necessary for ” Member States to ensure that relevant, coherent and clear information is available concerning motor vehicles that can be regularly refueled with the different fuels placed on the market or recharged at refueling points “. In this case, that they are available on the corresponding pumps and their nozzles, as well as on the filling plugs or in their immediate vicinity.
Regulatory or voluntary?
Fuel distributors have a simple obligation: to provide their customers with clear, relevant and harmonized information. They are then free to affix the graphics of their choice to their distribution devices, while retaining their suppliers’ trade names (e.g. Excelium). However, standard NF EN 16942 offers a ready-to-use “kit”. And what’s more, a kit that meets the demands of the European Commission, guarantor of compliance with the 2014 directive, which had led it, in August 2015, to ask the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) to draw up a standard ” establishing the specifications for harmonized labeling for each of the fuels placed on the market “. At the Technical Committee no. 441 of this body, which includes the Bureau Français de Normalisation du Pétrole (French Petroleum Standardization Office), a body that operates under delegation from AFNOR for France and brings together professionals from the sector, Brussels also requested that ” these provisions include a graphic expression including a color code “, in the spirit of article 7 of the directive. So it’s done!
> See NF EN 16942…
> Find out more about the Oil Committee…
CEN/Cenelec
