Nissan Plans a Low-Emissions First
Nissan North America Inc. said Tuesday that it plans to introduce the world’s first gasoline-powered super-ultra-low-emissions vehicle in California next year, beating competitors out of the starting gate in the race to meet the state’s stringent SULEV standards.
The Garden Grove-based company, a division of Nissan Motor Co. of Japan, says the system will produce fewer total emissions during a 20-mile round-trip commute than today’s typical new vehicle will while parked in a driveway all day with the engine shut off. That’s because conventionally powered cars or trucks produce unburned emissions in the form of fumes from evaporating fuel.
Although obtaining SULEV status is not mandatory, vehicles that do so can give auto makers credits toward achieving the ultimate goal, the zero-emissions standards that become mandatory in 2003. That’s when 10% of all new cars and light trucks sold in California by the major auto makers must be certified as zero-emissions vehicles.
Nissan’s SULEV will be a 2000 Sentra compact sedan that teams a slightly modified 1.8-liter, four-cylinder engine with a super-efficient new catalytic converter and an improved charcoal canister that eliminates evaporative emissions from unburned fuel.
But the company expects to produce only about 500 of the engines and will offer them as an option rather than standard equipment. A spokesman for Nissan North America said the company doesn’t expect to charge a premium for the clean-burning engine.
Rich Varenchik, a spokesman for the California Air Resources Board, said the agency has been reviewing Nissan test data for several months and that early results are encouraging. Board approval for the Nissan SULEV could come by November or December, he said.
If Nissan does win SULEV certification for the system, Varenchik said, “it will be a significant step” in the state’s continuing efforts to reduce automotive air pollution.
Nissan’s isn’t the cleanest gas engine ever developed--Honda Motor Co. showed a “cleaner-than-zero-emissions” engine at the Los Angeles and Detroit auto shows in 1997. The company claimed the engine’s exhaust emissions are cleaner than the ambient air in the Los Angeles Basin. But Honda has not announced any production plans for the engine.
Certain models of Honda’s Accord and Mazda Motor Corp.’s Protege are the cleanest gasoline-powered cars sold in California, meeting the state’s ultra-low-emissions standards. Ford Motor Co. also markets a full-size Crown Victoria sedan that meets ULEV standards, but it burns compressed natural gas rather than conventional gasoline.
