Re: European testing
In both Europe and the US, the manufacturer carries out the emissions testing. Both the EPA and the European government performing type approval do a random sample to verify that manufacturers aren't routinely submitting fake results, but they don't have the resources to routinely test all new vehicles. Sometimes this testing does pick up cheats, like Hyundai last year. But it can't pick up cases where the vehicle detects that a standard emissions test is being run and switches to a more economical or lower emission mode - the random sampling just repeats the standard test to check that a production car gets the same result, within a reasonable error margin.
The point of the standard tests is to allow comparison between vehicles, not to give an indication of how much fuel would be consumed on your journey. There are simply too many variables with temperature, road surface condition, wind speed and direction even before you account for driving style and traffic. The EU test could stand to be revised, though, as it has slow accelerations and nearly all of it is below 60mph. This gives unrealistically good numbers when compared to most drivers' behaviour.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
