Quote:
Originally Posted by pete c
This analogy is ridiculous. You need to look at how much work is being done for a given amount of emissions. In general, the work done by the excursion is the same as that done by the civic (hauling around a butt or two). The % of pollutants in the exhaust mean nothing, once they leave the tailpipe. It is all about the total quantity of pollutants. So, when the excursion dumps 5X the exhaust into the air as the civic, so what if its pollutants are 1/2 as concentrated.
It is simple math. Trouble is, Big Auto makes money selling Excursions and Escalades and the more help they get keeping alternative vehicles off the road, the better for them. These emission rules along with safety regs keeps the little guys from having a chance to market alternative stuff.
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Yes, I agree that Excursions are sometimes used simply to carry a single person or two (though I don't know how to determine what % of time all existing Excursions are used for moving people only) and I agree that in such a case the emissions are much worse per-person than a Civic... no argument with that.
However, Excursions are also used for what they were designed to be used for, which is to haul huge travel trailers, large boats, etc. In that case, the amount of work that the Excursion does is much greater than what a Civic ever could do. We can argue that trailers so large that they require an 8500lb+ GVWR tow vehicle should only be used by commercial users, but that's besides the point (not that we're on the point of this thread anyway... heh).
I also agree that it is all about the total quantity of pollutants, which is why I pointed out that there are more than 12x Civics sold compared to Excursions. Generally, the 8500lb+ GVWR vehicles are relatively low volume (~16,000 Excursions in 2005). The huge volumes (and big money-makers for the automakers) are the light duty trucks, like the F150 (nearly a million sold in 2005 vs ~300,000 Civics) and the Escalade... Fortunately, the emissions are a bit more restrictive for these vs the Excursion. Not quite as restrictive as the Civic, so focus your ire on those rather than the Excursion.
For model year 2019, every vehicle that has a GVWR under 8500lbs will have to meet the same g/mi emissions... will be interesting to see what happens with the bigger light duty trucks then...