Quote:
Originally Posted by n8kwx
I doubt that Toyota ships different cars to California emissions states. That would be a logistics nightmare. In fact my car (Illinois) was packaged with "50 state emissions".
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I did some more research on this topic. Here's what I found...
Toyota, and all other PZEV-selling manufacturers, indeed have different emissions equipment for different states. For the regular four-cylinder Camry, there are two option codes, "50 State Emissions" (FE), which is Bin 4, and "California Emissions" (CA), which is Bin 3 (PZEV).
The Hybrid version of the Camry is an exception. The only option code available is "50 State Emissions", and this is the same for all cars, regardless of state.
What confused me is that the government site ranked non-CA TCHs as having an "Air Pollution Score" of 8, while CA TCHs get a score of "9.5." The difference is in the warranty, not the car. PZEV is equivalent to SULEV II (Bin 3 or better), but with a guarantee of SULEV II cleanliness over 15 years/150K miles.
Within SULEV II, there can be two levels: Bin 3 (air pollution score of 8) and Bin 2 (air pollution score of 9). PZEV cars (CA) automatically get a score of 9.5, regardless of Bin 3 or Bin 2 status. This explains the jump from 8 to 9.5, even though the cars are identical.
What this means is that a non-CA (therefore non-PZEV) Civic Hybrid (Bin 2) with a score of 9 is actually cleaner than a PZEV CA Camry Hybrid with a score of 9.5 (Bin 3).
And AT-PZEV is the same thing as PZEV, except that it uses "advanced technology" (hybrid).
So the lesson learned, IMO, is that if you really want to compare a new car's tailpipe emissions, look at "Bin", not "Air Pollution Score" or one of CARB's acronyms.