PZEV vs. SULEV

As my car search progresses, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about emissions, and what sorts of cars I can get that will lower the amount of pollution that I produce while driving. In California, the Air Resources Board has produced several different emissions certification levels, for which all new cars are tested against, and the appropriate labels are assigned.

The most rigorous emissions standard is called PZEV - short for "Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle". But the only definition for PZEV that I could find, is somewhat confusing:

"A PZEV-rated vehicle is 90% cleaner than the average new car and also has near-zero evaporative emissions."

So, that sounds nice and all, but what the heck are "evaporative emissions"? My googling didn't produce anything of note, but luckily my dad turned up a PDF that did the trick. I really recommend reading that document - it not only explains what evaporative emissions are, but it also goes into some detail about all of the emissions that come out of a car's tailpipe.

I think that the main problem that I'm having is that all of the emissions standards up until now have been geared towards reducing smog. And while that is great and all, I'm on a mission to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases (i.e. CO2) that I put into the atmosphere. And unfortunately, the government really hasn't started targeting this yet, and so the only real solution available is to "burn less gas".

Which, of course, hybrid cars are supposedly pretty good at. While I was in Chicago, my dad and I went to a Toyota dealership, where they had 2 Camry hybrids and 3 Priuses on the lot (as compared with Toyota dealers in California, which don't ever appear to have these cars in stock). And while neither car impressed me enough that I absolutely had to buy on the spot, what was even worse was that I didn't really see super-awesome gas mileage on my short test drives. It seems that in order to see the true benefits of a hybrid car, you not only need to drive in traffic conditions that suit the vehicle (primarily city driving), but you also need to modify your driving behavior.

Ug. I thought I would just be able to buy a hybrid and be done, but it is actually going to take a lot of work to re-train myself to drive more efficiently.

So, I'm still not sure what I'm going to do. I think I'm going to need to spend some time researching purchasing carbon credits next.

-Andy.

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