Fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas emission standards for medium and heavy duty vehicles have been revealed by US President Barack Obama.
The standards have been developed by the US Department of Transportation National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in combination with truck and engine manufacturers, fleet owners, environmental groups and the state ofCalifornia. The heavy duty fleet refers to all on-road vehicles rated at a gross vehicle weight of 8,500lbs or above.
Under the terms of the new programme, trucks and buses built in 2014-2018 will reduce oil consumption by a projected 530million barrels and greenhouse gas pollution should be reduced by around 270million metric tons.
By the 2018 model year, the programme is expected to achieve significant savings across all vehicle types including:
- Combination tractors: They have adopted differentiated standards for nine subcategories of combination tractors based on three attributes: weight class, cab type and roof height. The final standards should achieve a nine-23 per cent reduction in emissions and fuel consumption over the 2010 baselines.
- Heavy duty pickup trucks and vans: The agencies are establishing corporate average standards for heavy duty pickup trucks and vans with each manufacturer’s standard for a model year depending on its sales mix – higher capacity vehicles have numerically less stringent target levels. The EPA standards adopted for 2018 represent an average per vehicle reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 17 per cent for diesel vehicles and 12 per cent for petrol vehicles.
- Vocational vehicles: This covers a wide variety of truck and bus types ranging from transit buses to school buses, emergency vehicles and motor homes. The final programme for vocational vehicles for this phase is limited to tyre technologies and the standards show emission reductions from six-nine per cent from a 2010 baseline.
