Saturday, January 10, 2009

Follow the leader

Some people are just not very good when it comes to being the lead car in a 'follow me' scenario. Case in point the guy I was supposed to be following today. It didn't start well - he turned out of a side road in to heavy traffic without and consideration for the fact that I was following him. It took me another minute or so to get a gap in the traffic by which time he was long gone. I pulled over and called him up. He told me where he was so we met up again, and off we went. It went better this time - we got half a block before he cruised through a red light in front of me. I stopped and this is a particularly long red light. By the time it had gone green again, he'd made his way on to the motorway, so I just gave up and drove home. It took about another 20 minutes before he called me up from 30 miles away to find out where I was.
If you want someone to follow you, give some consideration to that as you drive. Use your common sense.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

The 2008 Toyota Camry LE - a PZEV?

I had the chance to drive a 2008 Camry LE over the last couple of weeks and it's an interesting car. A sticker on the rear window claimed that this was a PZEV - Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle. To me that implied it was the Camry Hybrid, which it clearly wasn't. Confused, I did some research. Both the 2.4 4-inline and the 3.5 V6 are now classified as ultra low emission engines (ULEV - Ultra Low Emission Vehicle) because Toyota have fitted the same hydrocarbon-absorbing catalytic converter that's found in the early model Prius. This added constriction in the exhaust system reduces power output from the engine by about 3bhp.

So why the PZEV confusion? Well it turns out there are two classifications of vehicle now. Ultimately, what California wants are ZEVs - zero emission vehicles. Nice idea, but that means hydrogen or electric, which means almost zero vehicles meet that classification right now. As a compromise, the PZEV category was introduced. To classify as a PZEV, a vehicle must:
1. have zero emissions from the fuel system
2. have a warranty that covers 15 years or 150,000 miles
3. meet Super Ultra Low Emission Vehicle (SULEV) tailpipe emission levels
Astonishingly, that last item doesn't just mean hybrids, it now includes a whole glut of cars you wouldn't think were particularly green, including (but not limited to) the Toyota Camry and Camry Hybrid, VW GLI, Subaru Forester, Outback and Legacy, Honda Civic GX, most Mazda 6 models, the Ford Fusion, and in California, the Ford Focus.

Weirder still, if you get out of California where they have a cleaner fuel formulation, the Prius doesn't actually classify as a PZEV any more but as a ULEV instead - an Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle. This gives us the bizarre possibility that by the exact definition used, outside California a 21mpg Toyota Camry is classified as a lower emission vehicle than a 51mpg Toyota Prius.

This does smack of deliberately confusing the consumer so that the car manufacturers can get away with ratings they really don't deserve.