Look what was headline of my morning newspaper today:


President Barack Obama was to issue overnight regulations allowing California and 13 other states to set tougher car emissions and fuel efficiency standards, a sharp reversal of Bush administration policy.


So whats next for us Californios? No farting in our cars?


Oh, and don't laugh all you peeps from other states, YOUR NEXT!

 

bring it on. I'm looking forward to more efficient use of gasoline.

Check out https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...er-learns.html as to why this is good news, not bad.

Matt

 

Sounds like good stuff. Are older cars going to be exempt? I mean, they can't make you get rid of a 5 year old car, or newer, just because some new law says that brand new cars have to be this or that. Right?

 

My state (texas) is offering a $3000 incentive through dealers if you trade in your old, qualifying vehicle for a new, fuel-efficient car (minis included) or a hybrid.

 

Here in California, if your car is older than 20 years, there is no smog, though I think that capped at 1978 I belive, you could have the worst polluting vehicle and be exempt. That's what drives me nuts, they get exempt and us guy's cant pass smog because of the visual inspection. Could be the cleanest running car out there, but that dosen't matter If it was stricktly about clean air this wouldn't be happeing.

 

there are lots of reasons, both good and bad, why very old cars are exempt from inspection. They are still supposed to meet the standards at the year of manufacture though. And no, it's not retroactive. Older cars don't have to meet newer standards.

The "turn time" for the majority of the light vehicle fleet is about 15 years. In that period of time, most cars are taken off the road, driven to the dirt, wrapped around a tree or left in a ditch. Fact is that while older cars are allowed to not be as clean, there are less and less on the road every day.

And there is some sanity in the state as well. Used to be new cars required anual inspections, now we're at every two years, with new cars exempt for the first 5 years of ownership.

It's not the draconian state of opression that Jiminni seems to think it is...

Matt

 

I think it would be good if they brought inspections and emission tests to Nebraska.

However, emission legislation would not go over well here, the locals enjoy their big diesel trucks too much - belching black smoke out of semi truck style pipes. Also, there are lots of cars from the 80s and 90s here that would fail an emission test, or any kind of mechanical inspection for that matter.

The inspections would take roughly half the cars off the road here, it would free up space on the road.

 

California did have a program in place to influence owners of exempt cars, where they would get $1,000 if it was junked. Doubt that made much of a dent though.

Personally this ruling concerns me that it will add extraordinary costs to new cars (especially those built for the CA market. Most manufacturers have already adopted the current strict CA emission requirements for their 50 state fleets.

 

This was just a directive for the EPA to revisit it's decision to deny the first attempt by CA and some other states to have there own emmissions req's.

What I find disturbing about all of this was that it was heavily lobbied by the ethanol group. And they don't have our interests in mind now do they......

 

one of the larger Japanese car companies says no problem to get much, much higher MPGs with existing technology. Even Bob Lutz said that GM can do the federal mandate without too much stress.

What's missing here is the buyer. CAFE standards aren't the best way to do anything about fleet MPG, but when the buying public does what they do, and we don't pass a carbon tax to increase the cost of driving in-efficient vehicles, that's what's left.

Craap, if each and every buyer vowed to get a car that had 15% better EPA mileage than the one they replaced when they bought, a lot of this would have already happened! (Fleet averages have been pretty flat since 85 with only a slight upturn in the last 3-4 years, actually decreasing a bit as larger SUVs and extended cab pickups were used as commuter cars.) Instead, we don't and the only way to improve fleet averages is through poorly honed legislation. It's not the best way, but at least it's better than what we've been doing.

One other thing to think about. No matter what we do, the rest of the world is acting to improve efficiency. If we do nothing, each and every time that fuel prices spike, or if they just creep up, that will be an incentive to buy the foreign products that have already embraced the technology and manufacturing techniques needed to increase fleet averages. So if we do nothing we can garantee that US manufacturers market share will decrease. If we do something we can at least provide some push for the car makers to create world competitive technologies, even though the buying public seems not to care in the slightest (based on buying patters) about the long term health of car companies, our energy dependancy issues with the economic and national security risks that come with our half asssed approach to energy policy.

Matt

 

Good news indeed. Now California will not be prevented from enacting tougher emissions rules. This is one area that I like CA leading the way as it eventually becomes standard across the country, even if the Fed does nothing.

 

The funny this is I had a 68 pontiac firebird that I stuffed a 455 ci engine in that I had rebuilt (basically the only things that were original were the heads and the crank). When we did the smog (in Nevada, everything newer than 67 gets smogged) it showed cleaner than the specs for my 2005 Toyota Tundra! So, all this shows is that if you keep an old engine clean and do a valve and ring job on it every 60k, it will probably run as clean as an almost new car. Of course, that's a lot of money out every 60k, but in the case of my 68, I was only putting about 1k a year on it anyway.

Considering the gas mileage of these last two vehicles, I'm REALLY looking forward to my new mcs

Here in Nevada (only in Clark and Washoe counties), we get a bye on the first year of a new car then we have to smog every year thereafter.

Jerry

 

I'm not sure from reading this- Do our current MINIs qualify for the up-coming CA standards? I'm all for higher standards when needed, and wish that US auto makers hadn't lobbied against it all this time. Saturn- where's your lovely electric car now? We need to head this way as a country, but I would assume that a neew Mini would pass the toughest test. True?

 

Most 2009 MINIs are rated "SmartWay" on the EPA green vehicles site with Greenhouse Gas scores of 7 or 8 out of 10: http://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/Index.do

Looks like CARB's standards call for reduction of CO2 to around 200 g/mi by 2016 (starting at 323 g/mi this year) for passenger cars: <http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/ccms/ccms.htm>

The EPA site lists g/mi for smog emissions, but not CO2 Considering it's a "per mile" regulation, I have to assume that the more fuel efficient the vehicle, the less CO2 it belches per mile.

JIMINNI must not live in a place where they have "spare the air" days. I lived in Sacramento for 8 years and it's no fun sitting in traffic on a 100+ day with everyone's exhaust trapped in the valley.

 

that these are fleet averages as goals. On average, the fleet sold in CA (not sure how it's calculated) will have to average a certain MPG (CO2 per mile is pretty close to a MPG standard). Not all cars will have to meet the standard, but the average will. Cars manufactured prior to any fleet average years will not have to be upgraded, nor will they have to be taken off the road.

Matt

 

Actually just like converting to digital TV they are going to give out vouchers to people who still have old cars so they can get a new one that will meet the new standards. Then the program will be delayed a bunch of times and the government will run out of money for vouchers. So remember, if you want a free new low smog car get your voucher request in early.

But seriously it is good to see emissions standards being raised. I still find it hard to believe that some stated do not require any sort of inspection or emissions. I saw a car in FL burning a lot of oil and sounded like there were a few holes in the exhaust system, it also had no hood. But all that air gets blown out to sea and other countries so who cares?

Fuel efficiency I don't care as much about, it just better not kill the supercar. I don't even care that I can't afford a Bugatti that only gets 5mpg, but I want others to drive them so I can watch and be amazed and enjoy the sound of a really powerful internal combustion engine.

 

Ahh...excuse me but I live in Sacramentos exhaust trail. We get all the north valleys smog and crud down here in Fresno, so I know smog! But like I said earlier, "if this was strictly about clean air", passing a visual would not mean anything.

 

This type of legislation does worry me a bit, in terms of the manufacturer of course.

Letting each state set their own efficiency standards makes things very difficult for the manufacturer. They are going to have to now go through and check over each state to see who has the strictest of each standard, so that they are able to build a single vehicle that will be able to meet or beat the standards set forth. If the manufacturer wants to be able to sell the vehicle in all states, it is going to have to meet these requirements. Ideally, a company wants to produce a single vehicle which will be able to be sold country-wide, if not continent-wide to keep costs down.

If the above is the track that the manufacturer takes, that is where this legislation gets a little silly. It is basically letting one state set the standard for every other state, whether they like it or not. It will also need to be ensured that two or more state's standards do not conflict.

Now, if the manufacturer decides that they will create "special editions" of each model that meets of beats certain state's standards, it is going to add to R&D costs. This is where another problem may arise. The company is either going to be spreading these costs over the entire customer base, thus raising the price of the vehicle for all of us, or, it is going to cause the cost of the "special edition" type vehicle to be much higher in the state whose emissions standards it has to meet, compared to the rest of the country.

I just see this being a big issue, especially when extremely progressive states start trying to set standards that become so difficult for the vehicle manufacturer to meet, that certain segments of vehicles stop getting sold in the state all-together...

Overall, I'm not sure this is the best idea, I guess time will tell.

-Chase

 

The new proposed regulation would allow missions standards to very by state, efficiency standards are nationwide. There is a difference. Emissions deals with CO, NOx, and hydrocarbons, efficiency mpgs. So it shouldn't be too much of a burden on the manufacturer. Many cars have a partial zero emissions option which utilizes a very high density catalytic converter. This reg will just allow a state like CA to mandate a higher percentage of partial zero emissions vehicles, not the state fleetwide average in mpgs.

All this is moot of course if they start regulating CO2 emissions which can then only be controlled by higher mpg cars, and more electric vehicles. I'm not a fan of electric vehicles, particularly if the electricity is generated by burning coal or natural gas, I don't believe they really reduce CO2 emissions in the long run.

 

Interesting bit there about the inspections and emissions testing in CA and the cycle (e.g. the five-year exemption for new cars). Here in NC there have been a few rumblings recently about revisiting the whole inspections/emission testing program the State has in place. iirc, some studies have recently come out showing new cars rarely fail to pass the emissions tests, which calls into question the value of bothering with the tests. Likewise, they are finding defective equipment (like what would be found during the inspection portion) is not contributing to accidents or injuries/fatalities. In the cases where it does, the better enforcement action would be to deal with that particular vehicle/driver.