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10-30-2006 11:11 PM |
If this is the case, then depending on the composition of the unburnt hydrocarbon that gets through, a car w/o a cat will get better mileage than a car with a cat when going by only carbon dioxide emissions. Take the comparison in section 5.5 of this. Going to emissions controls dropped hydrocarbon emissions by more than an order of magnitude. Not that the difference in emissions systems would be that bad, but considering that
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Originally Posted by Wikiality
the manufacturer must pay a penalty, currently $5.50 per 0.1 mpg under the standard, multiplied by the manufacturer's total production for the U.S. domestic market.
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There might be a significant financial incentive to reduce emissions system effectiveness. If the cafe standard is 30mpg and if a car gets 25mile/gallon combined, and a gallon of gas weighs 6.216lbs, then it would use roughly 100,000mg/mile of gasoline. Assuming the worst case senario of having a catalyst that's not functional for the ccombined test, then that's a 1% difference, which translates into .25mpg less, or a $14 tax per car. Now if this is multipied across an entire manufacturer's fleet of say, 5 million cars per year, then that's a significant chunk of tax, something like $70 million.
Now I wouldn't go so far as to speculate a manufacturer would use a vehicle in the EPA test that didn't have the cat functioning at all, but if the cat is functioning at reduced efficiency during the EPA test interval, then that is still a big chunk of cash, maybe a few million per year, for a manufacturer who's over the cafe standard. And it would be pretty hard to detect, since from what I've gathered, ECUs can be reprogrammed.
Not that this is what happens, or has happened.... But if I were a thrifty auto CEO, a million bucks isn't something to sneeze at. Not that this is even possible. Maybe they do the emissions and fuel economy testing with the same car and strict security, and no one slips anyone any cash.... Because bribery isn't likely? ;)
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