So you have a cell phone plan and you go over minutes every month for years but the phone company never charges you…sounds like a dream come true, right?

Well, that will never happen and that kind of monitoring has a reason! It costs them (mostly man hours) to maintain their systems. The way the government is monitoring the environment is kind of the same way.

Car manufacturing is not environmentally friendly usually although Ford and Subaru are reaching in the right direction. Add to all of that the federal and state governments monitoring carbon emissions from not only the activities of the car manufacturing process but also the environmental effect that their cars cause.

In an effort to reduce emissions dramatically the State of California created a new category for Partial Zero Emission Vehicles based on an agreement between the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the manufacturers who sell cars in California. What CARB would have really loved to have done is passed a mandate that a growing percentage of vehicles being produced were Zero Emissions Vehicles (ZEVs) but that would occur at a huge cost to the automotive manufacturers because it would require huge advances very quickly in systems such as hydrogen or electric fuel cells. I think that we all know that the recent fuel crunch and the current economy is having drastic reprecussions to the auto manufacturers sales.

By current PZEV standards, the cars are required to have a 15 year/15,000 mile warranty on emission-control components, have zero evaporative emissions on its fuel system and fall under the SULEV category. These cars are only available in the 5 “clean car states” California, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, or Vermont and will soon be available in Connecticut, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Washington. All of these states have adopted California’s pollution control rules.

Some other facts about PZEV:

• It has been said that a PZEV driving through Los Angeles County during times of high smog actually releases cleaner air out of its exhaust than it took into its system because it literally cleans the air.
• In the 15 year warrantied life of a PZEV emission sytem, it will emit less harmfull emissions than if you spilled a pint of gasoline on the pavement once. (see the picture of a gas spill at NASCAR- QUICK make another PZEV!!)
• There is a rumor about the amount of low carbon monoxide emissions from PZEVs but because this one is potentially dangerous and I do not have the facts, I am not going to publish it for now.

I wrote in my other details about PZEV in an article specifically about the Ford Focus PZEV yesterday and these emissions controls are pretty incredible and welcome in our smoggy city of Los Angeles.

Originally posted here