From Dan Neil in the Los Angeles Times:
In some atmospheric conditions — a brown day in San Bernardino, for instance — PZEV vehicles actually clean the air, which is to say, their emissions are cleaner than the air sucked into the engine.
In terms of noxious emissions, your spouse pollutes more than a PZEV.
Despite automakers’ long and litigious assertions to the contrary, they have been able to develop the compliant technologies. There are currently more than 30 PZEV vehicles on the market (visit http://www.driveclean.ca.gov ), including BMW’s 3-Series cars and wagon, Honda’s Accord, Subaru’s suite of Legacy cars and wagons, and Volvo’s big V70 wagon — not exactly hair shirts of eco-martyrdom.
So let’s hear it for big government. Had California not used its enormous leverage in the marketplace — the state is the biggest vehicle market in the country — the automakers would not have been motivated to develop the engineering that will, now that it is available, become integrated into the larger vehicle market. California’s zero-emissions mandate has been adopted, with some variation, in the “green states” of Maine, New York, Vermont and Massachusetts. Why, clean air is spreading like a prairie fire.