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Guys, sorry I've not been back recently. Very busy at work and no time to do much else. I just hadn't realised how long I'd been away! Anyway, Big Dave, you replied to my bit about Euro Diesels giving details of what's needed stateside. Just to keep you up to date, most Euro diesels now have particulate filters (my Fiat certainly does) to meet the Euro4 regulations. Euro5 is due soon and there are already large trucks being built to that standard. Some are using urea injection (mostly Mercedes trucks) to meet that standard, but a few are doing it without. I don't have the details of the Euro5 regulations, but I would guess they are going to be similar to the stricter current US regulations, so it is possible that Euro diesels could be brought into the US relatively easily. As for crash testing, you would be surprised how good a small car can be if it is properly designed. Again, not knowing the US or Euro tests I can't make a proper comparison, but I do know that with most Euro cars today it is possible to walk away from a crash at 30mph (that's head or or side impact) and crashes at much higher speeds are survivable.
I have not really looked into it, but I did hear about a catalyst filter a couple of years back that dealt with NOx and particulate emmissions. In essence it was a particulate filter with an added catalyst that burned the collected particulates using the NOx emmissions instead of oxygen. The result was it lowered both NOx and particulate levels. I don't know if it got beyond prototype stage or whether it proved to be less effective than first thought, but I don't know of any vehicles actually making use of such a catalyst.
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