Honda Comes Clean

Japan's Honda Motor Co., the mighty mite of motorcycles, leaped into the lead of the auto industry's clean-air derby last week. The firm's new low-pollution auto engine became the first ever to pass all the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's emission control criteria for 1975, standards that the Detroit leviathans have tirelessly argued could not be met in time. Honda immediately informed the EPA that it is breaking ranks with most other car producers and would no longer seek a one-year postponement of the 1975 requirements. Company officials say that their compact car, the Civic, now marketed only in Japan, would carry the engine and go on sale in the U.S. by 1974.

Detroit automakers, skeptical that such an engine can develop enough power to drive large U.S. cars, are generally unconvinced that the Japanese advance solves their pollution-control problems. They doubt that the engine will meet the EPA's extremely tough standards for 1976, especially those for nitrogen oxide (Honda engineers insist their machine will easily do it). In tests held in Michigan, Honda's four-cylinder engines, using no catalysts, afterburners or other extra emission-reducing devices, posted pollution counts well below EPA ceilings even after running for 50,000 miles. Here, in grams of emission per mile, are the U.S. standards for '75 and Honda's performance:

U.S. Honda

Standards Performance

Carbon Monoxide 3.4 2.57

Hydrocarbons .41 .26

Nitrogen Oxides 3. .98

At present, conventional engines must use rich fuel mixtures--with a relatively high ratio of gasoline to oxygen --that produce unsatisfactory levels of pollutant gases. In addition, the rapid cooling of the gas temperature in the cylinder leaves unburned fuel, which is also spewed out as a pollutant. Honda's power plant, ponderously called the "compound vortex controlled combustion engine," or CVCC, scrubs these problems by being built to operate on a much thinner fuel mixture, using a lower ratio of gas to oxygen. Moreover, the cooling process in the cylinder is slowed to assist combustion of the fuel. All this reduces pollutant gases. The EPA tests revealed that the new engine is rather large for a small car like the Civic, and it burns about 20% more gas per mile than the smaller engines in other autos of the same weight. In bigger cars like GM's Vega, however, the Honda engines gave better than average mileage in the EPA tests. The principles of the CVCC engine have been known for years, but little effort was made to apply them because of technical difficulties. Having apparently solved them, Honda has applied for 230 patents.

The test results may well stiffen the Government's resolve to make all automakers comply with the anti-pollution rules. Last week EPA Chief William D. Ruckelshaus said he had strong support from President Nixon to enforce sternly all anti-pollution laws. Ruckelshaus noted that one way to reduce emissions --and ease the energy shortage--would be to boost substantially the current 4-c- per gallon federal excise tax on gas. Along with cutting pollutants, automen may also face the problem of making engines that drink much less fuel.

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