PZEV? How?

[weelliott]

How is it that subaru can get the PZEVC badge without shutting the
engine off? I asked a subaru salesman, and he said that there are four
emissions tests, and on two of them subaru qualified as having zero
emissions, and as long as you can do it on half, you get the badge. My
question is how did they do that? Even the most clean running engine
produces CO2. Is that not considered an emission since it is not a
pollutant in the traditional automotive sense? I'm just curious about
the technology and testing procedures/guidelines/specifications.

I'm not trying to make any political statements, so PLEASE don't turn
it into a discussion on CO2 and how much you love or hate Al Gore.

 

[John McGaw]

How is it that subaru can get the PZEVC badge without shutting the
engine off? I asked a subaru salesman, and he said that there are four
emissions tests, and on two of them subaru qualified as having zero
emissions, and as long as you can do it on half, you get the badge. My
question is how did they do that? Even the most clean running engine
produces CO2. Is that not considered an emission since it is not a
pollutant in the traditional automotive sense? I'm just curious about
the technology and testing procedures/guidelines/specifications.

I'm not trying to make any political statements, so PLEASE don't turn
it into a discussion on CO2 and how much you love or hate Al Gore.

From Wikipedia PZEV article:

"The vehicles constructed to meet the PZEV requirements also fall within
the Super Ultra Low Emission Vehicles (SULEV)-category. The Super Ultra
standard is designed to be even more rigorous than the Ultra standard or
low-emission vehicle standard. Various techniques are used to reduce
pollution in these vehicles. In order to qualify as a PZEV, a vehicle must
meet the SULEV standard and, in addition, have zero evaporative emissions
from its fuel system plus an extended (15-year/150,000-mile) warranty on
its emission-control components, which incidentally covers the propulsion
electrical components of a hybrid electric vehicle."

From Wikipedia SULEV article:

"Examples of hybrid vehicles delivering SULEV emissions performance include
the Honda Insight and the Toyota Prius.

A conventionally powered example is the Ford Focus SULEV variant. In 2005,
General Motors' 3800 Series III V6 engines became the industry's first
gasoline V6s to carry the SULEV rating and can be found in the Pontiac
Grand Prix (optionally supercharged), Buick LaCrosse, and the Buick Lucerne.

PZEV is a more stringent variant of the SULEV standard, the Hyundai Elantra
PZEV, The Subaru Legacy, Forester and Outback 2.5i PZEV, the Volkswagen GTI
2.0L Turbo PZEV, and the Volkswagen Jetta 2.5 PZEV are available in the
U.S. state of California in compliance with this standard."

From my limited research it appears that shutting the engine while stopped
is one way of reducing overall emissions it is not required and a vehicle
can qualify without using it. The CARB is very thorough about these things
and I don't doubt that they are calling it according to the existing rules.

 

[1 Lucky Texan]

How is it that subaru can get the PZEVC badge without shutting the
engine off? I asked a subaru salesman, and he said that there are four
emissions tests, and on two of them subaru qualified as having zero
emissions, and as long as you can do it on half, you get the badge. My
question is how did they do that? Even the most clean running engine
produces CO2. Is that not considered an emission since it is not a
pollutant in the traditional automotive sense? I'm just curious about
the technology and testing procedures/guidelines/specifications.

I'm not trying to make any political statements, so PLEASE don't turn
it into a discussion on CO2 and how much you love or hate Al Gore.

I'm sure there are 'thresholds' and if the pollutants being measured
fall below - perhaps in some combination - you pass. Keep in mind,
just testing the air will detect some CO2. Then there is probably some
error rate with the equipment like +/-6% or something. I dunno. Zero
is never really ZERO with stuff like this. Just extremely low with the
equipment and methods available.

 

[Florian /FFF/]

How is it that subaru can get the PZEVC badge without shutting the
engine off? I asked a subaru salesman, and he said that there are four
emissions tests, and on two of them subaru qualified as having zero
emissions, and as long as you can do it on half, you get the badge. My
question is how did they do that? Even the most clean running engine
produces CO2. Is that not considered an emission since it is not a
pollutant in the traditional automotive sense? I'm just curious about
the technology and testing procedures/guidelines/specifications.

I'm not trying to make any political statements, so PLEASE don't turn
it into a discussion on CO2 and how much you love or hate Al Gore.

The partial zero emissions standard is actually a fairly important
stepping stone in the cleaning up of both traditional and hybrid
propulsion types.

Not all pollutants are CO2. A portion of unburned hydrocarbons leave
the vehicle through the tailpipe and evaporation inside the fuel
delivery system and are significant pollutants. That doesn't make the
amount of CO2 emissions less dangerous, but it's not all we need to
talk about.

 

[weelliott]

Not all pollutants are CO2. A portion of unburned hydrocarbons leave
the vehicle through the tailpipe and evaporation inside the fuel
delivery system and are significant pollutants. That doesn't make the
amount of CO2 emissions less dangerous, but it's not all we need to
talk about.

That is actually what I was referring to when I said polutants in the
traditional automotive sense. It used to be reasoned, as early as the
nineties that CO2 was not a pollutant. It was an unavoidable byproduct
of combustion, and since it could not be reduced by altering how the
combustion progresses, it was nto worth monitoring. Contrarily stuff
ike NOx or hydrocarbons could be reduced by running closer to
stoichiometry with better tuned fuel injection, optimizing timing,
heating the engine up faster, better catalysts, etc... As long as you
got rid of the other gasses and particulates, you could put as much
CO2 out as you wanted since it was a relatively benign gas. Obviously
there is now more attention on CO2.

The wikipedia quote cleared it up. I guess my confusion was because of
the word Partial in PZEV. I had assumed(wrongly I guess) that this
meant that Part of the time the car produces Zero emissions. Makes
sense to me. I guess that is not the case. Or it is close enough to
zero to be considered zero.

Bill

 

[Big Jim]

What's partial zero? Zoero is zero! A part of zero is ZERO. This is
some bogus marketing aided by a clueless government that cant
understand math concepts. "low emissions or Ultra low emissions" are
valid but it is impossible to have partial zero. I would feel stupid
having that badge on my vehicle.

 

[weelliott]

What's partial zero?  Zoero is zero!  A part of zero is ZERO.  Thisis
some bogus marketing aided by a clueless government that cant
understand math concepts.  "low emissions or Ultra low emissions"  are
valid but it is impossible to have partial zero. I would feel stupid
having that badge on my vehicle.

I am pretty sure that partial zero means that in a part of the
emissions testing the car produced zero emissions, or at least
emissions that were below a threshold that they equate to zero. Like
if most cars produced emissions measurable by whole numbers and
typically ranged from say 5 to 11, and so they decided to just round
to a whole number, then subaru came along and scored a 0.4, thus
rounding to zero. Pure Speculation on the rounding to zero part. But I
do know that they got partial because they were able to test as having
produced zero emissions on 2 of 4 tests.

I wouldn't feel stupid for having a badge like that. I'd feel stupid
if I had a honda and had a badge on the side that said 'powered by
honda' that had been taken off a honda lawnmower or generator. Or if I
had a relatively small engined 5 series BMW with an M3 badge on the
back. Then I'd feel stupid.