We recently helped our son Steve buy a used car. We settled on a Subaru Forester, and when we got it home, I noticed a label on the back of the vehicle that said, PZEV. In small letters below this, it said, “partial zero emissions vehicle.”
It reminded me of my days as a teenager when status was very important. A car could be an RT, or a RT/X, which was presumably even better than a plain old RT. Nowhere that I could remember, did anyone make clear what the difference was between the two models, but I can still remember thinking I’d take the RT/X over the RT any old day.
So I was interested to see an acronym on Steve’s car that was actually spelled out. And naturally, once I read it, I tried to figure out what the heck PZEV meant. We all have an idea what a zero emissions vehicle would be. It would take you down the road with no emissions of any sort. Kind of contrary to Newton’s laws, but maybe it is a target worth shooting for. Then there would be a 100% emissions vehicle, which I envision to be a cheap barbecue grill into which gasoline is dumped and lit. This “vehicle” put 100% of its emissions into the atmosphere, and didn’t move an inch.
A partial zero emission vehicle, then, would be somewhere between zero and 100%, which I would argue is the right category for every car that has ever been made.
Wikipedia to the rescue! “A partial zero emissions vehicle is a vehicle that has zero evaporative emissions from its fuel system, has a 15-year (or at least 150,000-mile) warranty on its emission-control components, and meets SULEV tailpipe-emission standards.” So a PZEV is a pretty cool thing after all. I wonder when the PZEV/X model will be coming out.