Navistar Urges Recall of 2010 SCR Engines

This story appears in the Aug. 30 print edition of Transport Topics.

Navistar Inc. has urged U.S. and California environmental regulators to recall 2010-compliant heavy-duty truck engines using selective catalytic reduction emissions technology that the company claims can be defeated by drivers.

Navistar said all 2010 SCR engines are “programmed to run without diesel emissions fluid, with the wrong fluid, with slush or frozen DEF or with the system disconnected.”

The recall request was made in a 41-page comment letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in response to the agency’s plan to conduct a “thorough review” of its SCR guidance.

EPA’s review plan was published in the Federal Register as part of a court settlement earlier this month in which Navistar agreed to drop its federal lawsuit.

Navistar said SCR engines “must be fixed so they ‘never operate’ when those conditions exist.”

“If EPA and [the California Air Resources Board] do not require the recall of these vehicles and instead explicitly or implicitly deem them to be lawfully certified, EPA and CARB will illegally relax the 0.20g [nitrogen oxide] standard preferentially for SCR-equipped engines,” Navistar wrote. “To relax the standard, EPA and CARB must conduct a rulemaking.”

Navistar, the only manufacturer using exhaust gas recirculation rather than SCR to meet 2010 emissions standards, said the agencies must refuse to certify additional engines until a full review is conducted.

At the same time it has pursued legal action, Navistar has engaged in a verbal feud with competitors using SCR, claiming the technology is inferior.

In response, Daimler Trucks North America said in a widely distributed letter to the trucking industry that Navistar “intentionally confused customers with fear-mongering, deception and distraction.”

“Our opinion is SCR technology is a viable technology,” Annette Hebert, chief of CARB’s mobile source division, told Transport Topics. “It works quite well when it works like it’s supposed to.”

However, CARB said it plans to develop its own SCR requirements, beginning with 2011 models, and would no longer use EPA’s 2009 guidance document.

“For 2011, we’re looking at shortening the mileage or hours in which a vehicle could operate without urea, by using water, or by tampering with the system,” Hebert said. “We are looking to push manufacturers to a shorter time than what was originally allowed by the 2009 EPA guidance.”

EPA last week declined additional comment, but has in the past defended its SCR engine-certification process and said the technology is effective.

CARB’s Hebert said that for a recall to take place, regulators first would need to show that the engine being sold is not the same one that was certified for the marketplace. In addition, regulators would have to show the engine was actually having a negative effect on emissions.

“Part of what would have to be shown is that is what’s really happening,” Hebert said. “Are people really tampering with the systems to a significant degree? Or is it there just something spotty going on?”

“What they’re [CARB] proposing is akin to waiting to recall tainted eggs until the government sees how many people actually get sick,” responded Roy Wiley, a Navistar spokesman. “If it’s only one, I guess they don’t recall them.”

Hebert added that regulators are typically more lenient with the first-year requirements of a new technology such as SCR.

“We were more lenient the first year because there are things like the fluid availability, the infrastructure for the fluids to be available,” she said. “There’s also the fact that we knew truckers were going to have to get used to the idea and get into the habit of putting the DEF in.”

But Hebert added, “We always intended to strengthen or tighten up those requirements.”

EPA’s settlement with Navistar and the agency’s subsequent posting of its review plans in the Federal Register drew cautionary responses from other truck and engine makers.

An attorney representing sister firms Mack Trucks and Volvo Trucks North America said the manufacturers did not object to the EPA-Navistar legal settlement, but they are concerned with “the potential example EPA may be setting through this settlement.”

“Navistar does not use SCR technology and apparently brought this litigation for the sole purpose of undermining confidence in SCR technology in order to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace,” the attorney said.

Likewise, in an Aug. 24 statement, Carol Lavengood, director of marketing communications for Cummins Inc., said the company’s “products with SCR are certified and compliant to the stringent 2010 standards.”

“The diesel exhaust fluid warning and inducement strategy performs as designed and is approved by EPA/CARB,” Lavengood said. “Cummins products with SCR do perform as designed and are responsible for emissions compliance with numerous mechanisms to ensure a fully operational SCR system.”

EPA and CARB also have been criticized by 11 members of Congress from California, who demanded in a letter that the agencies fix the “loophole” in the nitrogen oxides standard.

Led by Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.), the lawmakers called on EPA to “disavow” its 2009 SCR guidance and de-velop certification standards for SCR-equipped engines that ensure they will comply with the 2010 standard.

A spokesman for Richardson did not return a request for comment last week.