In a long-awaited move, the Environmental Protection Agency has introduced new rules to reduce air pollution with cleaner gasoline and cleaner cars. The rules would reduce air pollution by lowering the amount of sulfur in gasoline and cutting tailpipe emissions from vehicles.
Low-sulfur gasoline would help clean up the exhaust of older vehicles and increase the lifespan of their emission systems. In new cars, it would improve reliability and lower the costs of maintaining the vehicle emissions systems.
George Slover, senior policy counsel for Consumers Union, said, “Low-sulfur gasoline will help automakers develop new technologies for more fuel-efficient cars and trucks, and when you add up the benefits for better health and better vehicles, we think it's a big win for consumers.”
As part of its new Tier 3 emissions standards, the agency also changed the fuel specified for its fuel economy tests. That may sound esoteric, but the fuel the agency now uses hasn’t been for sale in the United States for almost 20 years. So the switch has the potential to make fuel economy estimates more accurate, something we’ve discovered is sorely needed.
Since federal fuel economy tests were first carried out in 1975, they have been run on a fuel known as Indolene, one of the purest formulations of gasoline available. But since the 1990s, most fuel available at gas stations has switched over to E10, a blend of 10 percent ethanol with 90 percent gasoline, in response to stricter clear air laws. Since the mid 2000s, E10 is the lowest ethanol blend available. Since ethanol contains less energy than gasoline, that has reduced the potential fuel economy that new cars achieve on the road relative to the numbers published based on EPA tests. As we have noted, consumers rely on these estimates and expect them to be accurate. In fact, consumers have won damages in two class-action lawsuit settlements over inflated EPA fuel economy estimates.
Consumer Reports has reported that hybrids, and some other cars that advertise excellent fuel economy, are those that most often fall short of their EPA estimates. Ethanol is far from the only reason for this, but it's likely that it plays a part.
Ethanol advocates in Washington, D.C., for a government-industry conference last month say there are some automakers demanding higher blends of ethanol in the test fuel so they can tune their engines to take advantage of it. Ethanol’s higher octane rating than gasoline, for example, could allow turbocharged engines to run at higher boost levels than they can now, delivering more power from smaller engines.
At minimum, testing emissions and fuel economy on pump gas should help results be more consistent with real-world performance, and it will allow the automakers to focus their engineering on strictly pump gas, rather than address a broader spectrum of fuels.
The new Tier 3 emissions standards, scheduled to phase in between 2017 and 2025, are expected to reduce sulfur in gasoline from 30 parts per million to 10, allowing automakers to install more advanced, efficient catalytic converters that can reduce air pollution when cold engines start up by 260,000 tons, or the equivalent of removing 33 million cars from the road, says George Aburn, co-president of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies.
The new technology is expected to add about $72 to the cost of cars on average by 2025 and less than 1 cent to the cost of a gallon of gas. The EPA said federal efforts to improve fuel economy and reduce greenhouse gases from these same vehicles would result in average fuel savings of more than $8,000 by 2025 over a vehicle’s lifetime.
By reducing pollution linked to health ailments, hospital visits, lost work productivity, and related problems, the EPA estimated the standards would provide up to 13 dollars in health benefits for every dollar spent to meet the standards.
See our complete guide to fuel economy.
—Eric Evarts
Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers or sponsors on this website. Copyright © 2006-2014 Consumers Union of U.S.
