Filed under: Sedans/Saloons, Government/Legal, Green, Mercedes-Benz
BLUETEC diesel fails to meet 50-state emissions requirement
Despite telling us back in January that its Mercedes-Benz E320 BLUETEC would be compliant with emissions standards in all 50 states, DaimlerChrysler has announced that it has not reached that goal and the vehicle will only be sold in 45 states when it goes on sale this fall. The five states in which the E320 BLUETEC will not be sold include California, Maine, Massachussets, New York and Vermont. The high emissions standards required by these five states represent a major hurdle for any manufacturer that plans to introduce diesels-powered light-duty vehicles in the U.S. If DaimlerChrysler, a vocal proponent of diesel in the U.S., couldn't meet their requirements, we're certain it will be at least a year or two for other automakers to either convert their current diesel engines or develop all-new ones to meet the stiff requirements.
An E320 BLUTEC prototype tested by the EPA in 2004 narrowly missed meeting the EPA's new Tier 2 Bin 5 standard for 50-state compliance. When the car does arrive it will use an NOx absorber to reduce the output of the harmful emissions. Future BLUETEC models will use a urea-based injection system, which the EPA has yet to approve and regulate but promises to do so soon. Urea-based injection technology appears to be the best solution for getting diesels on U.S. soil as fast as possible, but the EPA has concerns over adding another fluid to vehicles that needs to be actively checked and refilled by the driver.
[Source: Green Car Congress]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
t 4:09PM (8/29/2006)
Because it does not meet California LEV II is DCX not allowed to sell them, or is it just impractical/not profitable?
I am under the impression that federally it is a fleet average of EPA Tier 2 Bin 5 that matters. So for example you could sell a EPA Tier 2 Bin 8 large SUV, but sell some very clean small cars to balance things out? This makes polluting vehicles less profitable as it means the cleaner vehicles must be lower priced to ensure they sell enough.
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2008 Ford Mustang 4:19PM (8/29/2006)
You mean to tell me that the average driver still checks their fluids?
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Gary 4:22PM (8/29/2006)
well who wants to guess as to why the ban on diesels is so strong in say Two of the most busiest states? (California and New York). Hmmmm....i dont know but i have a hunch some big oil company is behind some legislation. Think about it, if you have diesel, you can go twice, maybe three times, or four times the average amount of one tank with the same liter displacement of regular gas (I could be a little off, but you get my point). Why would oil companies want diesels? And another thing, today's diesels are more cleaner and better running than the olden day's and they probably are better at burning and nicer than regular gasoline engines...
Just my 2 cents
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kevin 4:34PM (8/29/2006)
come on VW! you can do it!
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Travis Bickle 4:40PM (8/29/2006)
This is not good for MBZ. California, esp SOCAL is a huge market for them and they would have had a nice market for the new clean diesel cars.
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theautoprophet 4:42PM (8/29/2006)
Gary, that is BS. CARB wants clean air--they are the reason for OBD-II, etc. It has nothing to do with the oil companies. In fact, CARB was trying to regulate CO2, which would increase fuel economy by proxy.
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Stphane Dumas 4:47PM (8/29/2006)
#3 Gary, I begin to ponder if the "hybrid lobby" (Autoblog mentionned it at http://www.autoblog.com/2006/08/17/hybrid-owners-get-their-own-lobby-group/ )might be behind this? Taught the they arrived after CA and NY pass a law about diesel... maybe a way to bypass partially this is to use biodiesel B20 for exemple.
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Alex 4:51PM (8/29/2006)
Let's see...
... roads here in the Bay Area are full of 30-year old jalopys, huge diesel buses with sooth particles the size of hail, enormous trucks, and we're talking about enforcing standars on the diesel engines that have no problem in Europe?!
Gimme a f%cking break...
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Carlos 4:54PM (8/29/2006)
Gary, it's the politics of science.
Europe, and some of the US, writes policy based fuel economy and on the fact that CO2 is the greatest greenhouse gas in quantity. Diesel is good with CO2 and more efficient, so they write rules in its favor.
California and some of the US writes policy with an emphasis on smog and airborne toxins. Diesel is high in particulates and has been high in sulfur. The particulates are the big deal... thanks to their control, smog has (literally) visibly decreased the last decades.
In regards to greenhouse gasses, diesel is better on CO2 but worse with NOx emissions, due to the higher temperatures. NOx is a small percentage of pollution, but each NOx molecule is worse than several CO2 molecules. How much worse is NOx, exactly? There isn't agreement, and so there are conflicting governmental policies on it.
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Martin 5:46PM (8/29/2006)
Same problem VW had a few years back with the V10 TDI.
The engines will actually pass even the strict CARB requirements, but EPA will not certify the urea injection system so it can't be used. It really does not have much to do with CARB not allowing the engines, it's the EPA.
Also, this is NOT really the bluetec engine, this is the same 320CRD engine that MB uses in virtually everything in Europe. The bluetec system itself IS the urea-based injection system (I believe it is ammonia they wanted to inject).
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Bob 6:10PM (8/29/2006)
Conspiracy theories aside, this just seems to be an example of CARB getting a little to enthusiastic (read: unrealistic) with it's restrictions. Again.
Having just spent a weekend in Alex's next of the woods I can certainly understand the need to have tight emissions controls, but in this case they should consider easing back a bit and bringing their restrictions in line with the Euro standards already in place. If nothing else just push the Tier 2 Bin 5 regs back two years until the whole urea injection thing is settled. Woiuld certainly open up the US market to a wide variety of fuel efficient and powerful diesel engines. Unfortunately they are cutting off their nose to spite their face with this one.
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MPL09 6:18PM (8/29/2006)
To rebut Martin's comments, this is not the 320CDI engine, but actually a new V-6 diesel. And while the 320 Comon Rail Injection is on the intake side, the urea injection occurs on the exhaust side. Also, technically the Bluetech system's mainstay is the particulate filter in the exhaust system and not the AdBlue (read: urea) injection. So technically this is a Bluetech setup.
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Zo 6:58PM (8/29/2006)
#9 "fact that CO2 is the greatest greenhouse gas in quantity"
If you want to base it on fact, water vapor is the greatest greenhouse gas in quantity NOT CO2. CO2 is only 0.117%
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/gases.html
http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/16/5/7
http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
"Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many "facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold."
NOTE: All this info is from tree huggers -- stop believing the idiots who say the problem is CO2!!! If you take out water vapor (which all the Michael Moore Wanne-be's do so that they can deceive people) then yes CO2 is the largest but in the scale of less than 1 percent!!!
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snakesausage 7:33PM (8/29/2006)
The people of the United States need to understand that there is a clear and present danger called FORIGN OIL. There are a few technologies, vehicle and chemical that working together could put a significant dent I the amount of foreign oil that we import. Biodiesel has the most potential but without cars to run it in it becomes a non-solution. While I am very concerned about the environment but I am more concerned about my security. The situation of our country is dire … Please, EPA and California, keep your particulate matter standards but reduce the NOx emissions standards for the sake of national security. Everyone call your representatives, especially if you live in California and the states that follow that emissions standards and ask them to slightly modify their Nox specification, you may be able to save your country if you do.
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AMcA 7:54PM (8/29/2006)
Gary:
Calm down. Why would big oil companies fight diesel when they make and sell the stuff themselves?
This is all lunacy. If we want to consider CO2 a pollutant, shouldn't we be willing to make some small trade-offs on other pollutants to rein in CO2?
Once again, the total inflexibility of the enviros shows their agenda is smething grander than just cutting pollution. They hate cars and modern life. They're just not honest about it.
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chewy 7:59PM (8/29/2006)
If the EPA wanted to protect the environment they would have put a gas guzzler tax on pickups and SUVs.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/info.shtml#guzzler
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lwstudent 8:13PM (8/29/2006)
BlueTec DIESEL WAS INTENDED FOR 45 STATES INTITIALLY. THE USE OF ADBLUE MAKES THEM LEGAL IN 50 STATES.
"If the EPA wanted to protect the environment they would have put a gas guzzler tax on pickups and SUVs."
-- I totally agree!!
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Carlos 8:25PM (8/29/2006)
Zo, my post was about what different governments base their policies on, not what I think is right or not.
Water vapor is the most common greenhouse gas, but it's not certain yet whether or not we've done much to inrease its amounts. Since water can be absorbed by building materials, plants, soil, bodies of water, etc., most of what we add ends up there rather than in the atmosphere. It's also going to be hard to measure our effect because if a different greenhouse gas raises the earth's temperature, more water will evaporate into water vapor, even though we didn't really spew it out ourselves.
btw, I can't trust your third link; hope you understand.
According to the second, H2O is 60% of the greenhouse effect, but we don't know how much of that 60% is ours. A low number means people should still focus on controlling CO2; a high number means we have to control H2O instead but would still mean we're causing global warming.
CO2 also gets absorbed by the oceans and large plant masses (algea and forests). But even after that effect, concentrations are 30% higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution. (Incidentally, that's the biggest reason scientists want to save the rainforests. Their quick growth traps CO2 in wood, and even if you turn that to chairs or paper the CO2 never gets out. But rainforests get slashed-and-burned, and burning re-releases all that CO2, in addition to preventing new trees from growing and trapping CO2.)
CO2 is listed as 26% of the effect. 30% of that CO2 has entered the atmosphere in the last couple hundred years, so just counting CO2, humanity's responsible for 8-9% of the greenhouse effect. That's enough to cause problems, I'd say. It's also probably more than the the effect we're having through water vapor.
The focus has to be on just our contribution to greenhouse gasses; we don't want them all to go away. We just know that the temperatures before we started affecting it were better in many ways than the ones we have now, and also that several greenhouse gasses are up thanks to us.
If you're actively trying to not see any correlation, then you won't see it. I don't know why you'd want to do that though, other than being 'cool' by not being one of 'them.'
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Ryan 10:36PM (8/29/2006)
I spent a week in Amsterdam in March, and trust me even while I was stoned the constant smell of diesel is enough to make you have the worse headache of all times.
I'm assuming that not every car in Amsterdam has the "best" technology being that diesel is the "unleaded" of Europe.
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Ryan 10:46PM (8/29/2006)
Oh and did you know that a Benz is seems to be nothing more than taxi cabs in Amesterdam, freaking taxi cabs. We get a Ford Crown Vic? I was talking with some guys we met from Austraila while we were over there and they said they noticed the same thing. They said "down under" they usually have some crappy Ford's for taxi cabs.
Unreal, a Benz has been reduced to a Taxi Cab? People in Europe know how to keep there brands in-check! :-)
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