With the present state of the service industry, a sizable percentage of cars will not meet the standards after the first repair/adjustment if the levels are strict. In addition there is a shortage of mechanics of If the standards are set to send a high per

even reasonable training. centage of cars for repair/adjustment, the number of cars that cannot meet the standards without costly repairs will be so large that it will again affect public support.

4.5.4 Timing and Cost of Inspection Facilities

The time and cost required to set up inspection facilities depends to a large extent on the amount and type of related facilities that are already available. Three cases will be considered:

1.

2.

Safety-inspection facilities are already available

and emissions testing can be added to such facilities.

Properly controlled, privately owned service facili

ties are available, with emissions testing done at
such facilities.

3.

Neither condition 1 or condition 2 exists and in-
spection facilities must be built.

New Jersey is an example of the first situation and it has proved relatively easy from a physical standpoint to add emissions testing to the state-owned safety-inspection lanes.

For the idle

test that they are using, equipment costs are about $2,000 per lane. On the assumption that legislative authority already exists, it should be possible to put emissions testing in operation in one year.

Extra

manpower required would be one per lane. No meaningful estimate of operating or capital costs chargeable to the emissions testing is

possible because of shared costs.

Time and cost would both increase

if the testing were also intended to enforce the federal individual

California could be an example of the second situation since they license Grade A mechanics for various specialties including emission-control devices. The time required in this case should also not exceed one year. Costs for added equipment would again be about

$2,000 per station for an idle test. Operating costs would be mixed with adjustment and repair costs and, consequently, a separate estimate is probably of questionable meaning.

The third situation has been studied in considerable detail by Northrop-01son Laboratories and also by TRW. Because of the conditions assumed in this study, the cost results must be qualified although the results do give a good indication of the range to be expected. The land, structure, and equipment will cost from $23,000 to $60,000 per inspection lane, with a major portion of the difference in cost caused by the presence or absence of dynamometer equipment. These numbers are approximately confirmed by the TRW study which estimated $44,000 to $52,000 per lane for dynamometer-equipped facilities. Different tests not only use different equipment but they also have different throughputs per lane.

Based on these factors, the cost of land, structure, and equipment on a one-inspection-per-year basis is between $1.30 and $8.80 per car when calculated for California's population distribution and 10 million cars.

Operating costs in 1976 would be between $1.20 and $4.00 per car per year, again under California conditions. The original capital costs are a small fraction of this and they are included with structures amortized over 20 years and equipment over 5 to 10 years.

Training time for personnel would be between 90 and 180 hours

per man, which includes 40 hours classroom training.

Again on the assumption that legislative authority already existed, it would probably take 1.5 to 2 years to acquire land, erect and equip the buildings, and train personnel. At least one year must be added to any of the above time schedules if legislative authority does not already exist. Even more time must be added if an operational plan does not exist; witness the New Jersey and New York experiences. A state just starting would probably be fortunate to have a fully operational inspection system in 4 years.

In summary, only few states have any semblance of a testing/ inspection system that would be adequate to ensure compliance in use. Most states do not even have plans for such systems. The present service industry is inadequate to maintain the complex emission-control hardware called for with the dual-catalyst system planned for use in 1975-76. With this pessimistic appraisal of feasibility, it is well to consider alternate approaches.

4.6

Incorporation of Maintenance Considerations in Emission-
Control System Design

The pessimistic appraisal of the feasibility of vehicles equipped with dual-catalyst control systems meeting the standards in Customer use is indicative of a lack of consideration of maintenance

the design of such systems.

From the data presented in Section 3,

it appears that several systems offer maintenance advantages over the dual-catalyst system, although the low-mileage emissions of such systems, on experimental vehicles, may not currently be as low as those of the dual-catalyst system.

The three-valve carbureted stratified-charge engine and the

Wankel engine with thermal reactor show potential for low emissions without the use of catalysts. HC and CO deterioration factors for the former, at 1975 levels and as measured on the federal driving cycle, considerably less than those from catalyst-equipped vehicles.

are

X

Development work is required on the engine to reduce NO emissions to 0.4 grams per mile; however, such a development effort would seem well worthwhile due to the potential of the engine for reduced maintenance and improved performance in use over the dual-catalyst system.

Systems employing precise control of air-fuel ratio with a feedback loop, discussed in Section 3.6, have several possible maintenance advantages. Since an air-fuel ratio near stoichiometry results in almost optimum performance, the serious performance and fuel penalties inherent in other NO-control methods would be eliminated; the advantage, from the owner's viewpoint, of an inoperative control system would be removed. In fact, any malfunction of this system might easily degrade vehicle performance so that the owner would be encouraged to get the emission-control system fixed.

X

Since such a feedback loop makes the engine essentially selftuning, this approach should also eliminate a large fraction of the inherent variability between individual vehicles that results from manufacturing tolerances. Possibly also, operational variabilities that result from variations in driving habits, fuel consumption, atmospheric parameters, and induction-system deterioration would be largely eliminated. Thus a larger fraction of cars would operate as designed and emit less pollutants.

Excessive catalyst temperature caused by the simultaneous presence of excess oxygen and large amounts of combustibles would be eliminated since neither rich mixtures nor secondary air is required. Finally, since the system includes an electronic control circuit, installation of signals for malfunctions should be relatively easy.

Emissions of 1975-76 vehicles in customer usage can be expected to be greater than those measured during certification. Because of the

added emission controls, most vehicle configurations proposed for these years will require more maintenance than at present. For all systems, some additional inspection and maintenance will be necessary to assure that the vehicles are meeting standards in use. Some legal enforcement procedures will be required to assure that necessary inspection and maintenance are performed; otherwise, vehicles will very likely exceed the emission standards in use.

The service industry at the present time is not adequate to service the 1975-76 cars from an emissions standpoint. Only few states have a semblance of a testing/inspection system for emissions that would be adequate to ensure compliance in use.

A basic problem in establishing technological feasibility is that maintenance considerations have not been given adequate attention in design. The three-valve carbureted stratified-charge engine, Wankel with thermal reactor, and catalytic system with exhaust sensors and feedback control seem to have far more potential for achieving low

missions in use than the dual-catalyst system currently being proposed by most manufacturers for the 1976 model year.