WASHINGTON —Attorneys for Daimler Trucks North America and Volvo group today asked a federal appeals court to throw out an Environmental Protection Agency rule that allowed Navistar Inc. to pay “nonconformance penalties” for engines that failed to meet 2010 federal emissions standards for nitrogen oxide compounds.
Arguing before a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, truck makers attorney Christopher Handman said that the EPA should not have allowed the penalties because Navistar could have employed alternative selective catalytic reduction technology.
Navistar failed to comply with the standard, not because it was a “technological laggard” but for economic reasons, Handman said.
However, EPA attorney Michele Walter said the penalty option was justified because changing to SCR technologies would have required “substantial work” on Navistar’s part to meet the standard in a timely manner.
A related case appealed by the OEMs on EPA’s issuing certificates of conformity for Navistar’s non-compliant engines was dismissed by the appeals court last week.
