Navistar Urges Trucking to Back Gradual Phase-in of 2010 Regs
By Howard S. Abramson, Editorial Director
This story appears in the Feb. 16 print edition of Transport Topics.
ARLINGTON, Va. — A top Navistar Inc. official said the company is pursuing its own solution to meet the 2010 U.S. emission standards, because it doesn’t believe the fuel savings claimed by competitors will justify the higher costs and more complicated systems associated with the new engines.
James Hebe, Navistar’s senior vice president for North American sales, urged trucking officials to support the company’s call to allow gradual phasing-in of the standards, warning that the current economic downturn could lead to at least one more poor year for truck sales and possibly two.
Hebe, in a meeting with top officials from American Trucking Associations at ATA headquarters here Feb. 11, said Navistar’s 2010 engines will be ready on time, but the company was continuing its drive to ease the rules because the recession, coupled with the higher costs, “will drive a ‘no-buy’ decision by many fleets.”
Navistar — which will use exhaust gas recirculation in its new models — has proposed that the Environmental Protection Agency allow fleets to buy either 2007-compliant engines or 2010 models, to both provide costs savings during the recession and give fleets more time to test the new technologies.
All other U.S. engine makers will be using selective catalytic reduction to meet the 2010 standards.
Navistar’s new models will exceed the new standards, but the company will use clean-air credits it has earned in past years from EPA. Hebe said the company’s EGR engines will be fully compliant by 2012, when Navistar expects to exhaust its credits.
Hebe predicted that 2010 SCR and EGR engines both will be between $8,000 and $10,000 more expensive than 2007 models, but Navistar believes its engines will be cheaper to maintain and operate.
SCR engines require operators to add diesel exhaust fluid to clean up truck exhaust, adding to the system’s costs. However, the other engine makers have said fleets will gain fuel efficiency from the new models.
The last two times EPA tightened emission standards — in 2002 and 2006 — fleets went on buying sprees in the model year before the rules changed, actions dubbed “pre-buys.” With the sagging economy, analysts now predict there won’t be a pre-buy in ’09; sales last year were far below normal because of the falloff in freight.
Navistar’s competitors have refused to join the call for relaxing implementation of the 2010 standards.
Last week, a coalition of environmental interest groups also asked EPA not to modify the timeline.
“Delay of these standards would both set back vital human health protections and reward manufacturers who failed to comply with the deadlines,” the groups wrote in a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. Signers included the American Lung Association and the American Public Health Association.
Hebe took issue with claims by critics that Navistar was looking for a delay because they weren’t ready for the new rules.
“We are the ‘greenest’ truck maker in North America today, without a doubt,” Hebe said, and the emission credits the manufacturer will use are proof of its compliance.
“EPA created the use of banking credits, they encourage it” as an incentive to original equipment manufacturers to exceed emission standards, Hebe said, and Navistar will only be allowed to use about 80% to 85% of the credits for the 2010 engines.
Actually, Hebe said, Navistar’s competitors are “being penalized” for not having earned past credits.
He said the company would begin selling three medium-duty Maxxforce engines that meet the 2010 NOx standard by mid-2009.
