Even my '90 Silverado does pretty well. Last time I went and got it tested, they accidentally put in half it's real gross weight, and thus were testing it by passenger car standards.

It still almost slipped by, just barely failing one of the tests.

Yep, my (old - 96 TPI) Chevy barely even registers, Still! My mechanical injection Alfa (also old - 78) also passes without issue. There was a Nova (PBS) not too long ago that delved into the issue, the hiatus on commercial aircraft after 9/11 had a noticable effect on particulates.
Progress - of a sort.

I have an ancient Toyota Camry. Last time I had it checked, I think it was less than one percent.

It is possible that the emissions testing machines aren't quantitatively accurate when significantly below the thresholds. So it might read out everything more than 50% lower than the limit as near zero. Theoretically anyway.

My last emissions test in washington they didn't give numbers, just PASS printed next to various categories. They used to do so, i was kind of bummed to get nothing.

AH drives an ancient Toyota? Made in Japan or the USA?

It could likewise be a story about how lenient the standards are...

I've read some factlet like a minority (~5%?) of all cars produce something like 95% of the emissions. So, there are some junkers stinkin it up out there. And a majority of those must pass, too. So, standards would seem lax to those driving newer cars.

Tigershark-- I have to confess, I don't care much about cars. I could theoretically upgrade, but the car does everything I need. I imagine it was made in an American factory, but I'm not sure. I bought it used, before I had any money.

jefff: My last emissions test in washington they didn't give numbers, just PASS printed next to various categories. They used to do so, i was kind of bummed to get nothing.

I'm here in Washington, too. I now am in an area that doesn't require testing. I'm guessing, like Cali, the testing requirements suck. Just got back from the Bay Area. Still trying to get my sinuses cleaned up!

Hah. All the free-market zealots will point to this as Exhibit A that regulation of industry is harmful to the consumer. Why, you might ask? Because there isn't a problem that needs to be regulated!

They really say things like that.

Heh. Heh.

We got this fucking liberal confused daffy.
Truly... he's a born again dumb fuck.
Drives a gas guzzler.
LOL.
Bitches all the time about global warming.
LOL.
Passes the smog test and feels like he is doing his part.
LOL.

Heh. Heh.

Nicely done Libby.
Nicely done.

Catalytic converters are amazing things. Try the following experiment: Tomorrow morning, go outside and start your car. Then immediately run around back and watch the exhaust. You will see an immense amount of smoke that gradually fades away to nothing as the converter gets up to operating temperature. Cars used to produce that smoke all the time they were running, and those partially combusted hydrocarbons were responsible for much of the smog problem. I can remember days when I was a kid that you had to turn your headlights on to go to downtown Chattanooga. It was that bad. And yes, modern smog equipment is really that good.

Alan-- Well, if companies were responding to government regulations, then they would do the bare minimum to get it down to 95% or so. I imagine, though, that the free market is at work here because nobody wants their car to stink. This particular regulation may not be harmful, but it seems mostly unnecessary.

There is another obvious explanation: the legal maximum is really really high.

Thank the lobbyists who made sure the tests were easy to pass.

thanks charlie... for the first 10 comments I thought I was crazy.

pjcamp:

Catalytic converters are amazing things. Try the following experiment: Tomorrow morning, go outside and start your car. Then immediately run around back and watch the exhaust. You will see an immense amount of smoke that gradually fades away to nothing as the converter gets up to operating temperature.

I call bullshit-science on this.

Want to know why?

Run the exhaust into your fucking car.
How long you gonna live asshole?

ALL you fuckers rely on the atmosphere to take your exhaust away.
EVERY SINGLE LAST ONE OF YOU.

Until you own up to that...
YOUR ALL FUCKING FRAUDS!

American Hawk is just dreaming, pretending (as many idealogues do) that government really isn't good for much. Manufacturers still fight tighter certification standards, which have teeth, and don't make their cars and trucks clean just to appeal to consumers. Commenters up-thread have it right: the in-use tests are pretty lax, because they're aimed at consumers who would scream if their cars failed very often (inspection and maintenance programs have been very unpopular), and are indeed set just to catch really gross emitters.

So I am a fraud.
What are you going to do about it?
Write your Republican senator and complain?

Now I'm: ROFLMAO!!!!

Charlie, MK, I'm with you. The standards are that bad!

Hey Kevin, go tell that to the residents of the Central Valley of California who have some of the worst air in the nation ......

All caused by cow flatulence. We need to smog Harris Ranch.

The catalytic converters they developed for automobile engines don't work on cows. For that, you need a cattleitic converter.

pjcamp: go outside and start your car. Then immediately run around back and watch the exhaust. You will see an immense amount of smoke that gradually fades away to nothing as the converter gets up to operating temperature.

No, unless there is something seriously wrong with your engine, what you'll see is "fog" (small condensed water droplets). It's white or gray rather than black.

The explanation is simple. Burning hydrocarbons mostly produces CO2 and water. Until the exhaust warms up the hot water vapor will condense in the exhaust system.

Smog is vastly less of a problem in Southern California today than in the 1970s. It has cost an enormous amount of money to achieve this (e.g., California cars get significantly worse gas mileage because of the anti-smog technology), but it is a striking achievement. Unfortunately, neither pro-environmentalists nor anti-environmentalists want to mention this accomplishment, so it's not widely know.

Counterpoint to a poorly-punctuated comment a few spaces up, I believe that if you are healthy you will not be killed by running the exhaust from your modern well-tuned car into the passenger compartment--the CO content is low enough and the O2 is high enough to keep you alive for many hours or even days. Not sure that's true and I'm not going to try it myself, but I heard it from a real doctor.

The California smog standards are as strict as they come in the US (because we got a special exemption in the 72 Clean Air Act because our smog problem was so bad). Naturally the car mfg dislike this, and try to use the courts to relax California to the weaker federal standards.

pjcamp is correct about start-ups. Modern cars put out a large percentage of their smog in the first minute or so of operation. Most improvements over the last few years have been aimed at the first minute of operation. Things have gotten pretty elaborate (and expensive) - pre-heating snesors and catalytists for example.

Some cars qualify for ULEV levels of smog (Ultra-low-emmisions), like the Acura I'm driving now. I'm told ULEV vehivles once they have warmed up exhaust air that is potentially cleaner than what came in (for example in LA and central valley).

In terms of traditional smog spots, this seems to have worked - we have fewer smog alert days than we used to. Of course greenhouse gases are a different story...

Remote sensing showed that alot (50%) of the emissions come from a small (10%) fraction of the cars. Look up the Denver University FEAT system (it's a drive-by system that checks your car's output as you take an on-ramp, say). Or, check this:

http://aedatabase.vtc.edu.hk/Hong%20Kong%20Petrol%20Vehicles.pdf

Here in MN we stopped the mandatory testing some years ago. Now, in the summer, we have an increasing number and greater severity of "Health alert" days. So things are getting measurably worse.

I can't even remember how they tested here, but I note both your tests were done at steady low speed barely above idle.

Take moo's point. Wonder what you are like while accelerating when engines run richer, or high speed therefore under more load. Also, overall we have not improved mpg, so we are pumping out more per vehicle per year anyway, and more vehicles.

CA introduced the smog equipment because they had to. It is expensive and most of us could get by with an efficient 1000 cc car and we'd all be better off. But it was this or die so we chose the temporary lash up to please Detroit.

Things have to change. Buy smaller.

the Senate is moving forward on energy:

http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=234829&Month=1&Year=2006

Duncan Idaho: I believe that if you are healthy you will not be killed by running the exhaust from your modern well-tuned car into the passenger compartment--the CO content is low enough and the O2 is high enough to keep you alive for many hours or even days.

CO binds more tightly to the hemoglobin than does O2, and it stays bound, so even tiny doses of CO will accumulate in your blood and kill you if you are in an unventilated area. Auto exhaust will not kill you as quickly as 30 years ago, but it will kill you quickly enough.

The NY Times Magazine had a fascinating story this past Sunday about Toyota. It included this fascinating trivium:

And in the heavy intersections in Tokyo where air quality is poor, Takahiro Fujimoto told me, part of Watanabe’s vision is already real: “The emission gas of some advanced cars is in fact cleaner than the intake air.”

Went test-driving this weekend with a friend, and the sales guy (I include this 'cause I don't know if it's actually true or sales-guy talk) told us that the '07 Ford Focus we were test-driving qualifies as a PZEV, or "Partial zero-emissions vehicle", which he claimed made it, and I quote, "As clean as a hybrid". I didn't drive it, but it was probably slower than a hybrid too...

Anyway, it frustrates me the way cars have ramped up the power so dramatically over the last decade or so (350 HP "family sedans"?), while their MPG has stayed mostly static. I think a lot of people would prefer a 200 HP car that gets 28/35 over a 300 HP that gets 18/27, but they're all in a mad dash to have the most powerful vehicle in whatever segment it's in, if you listen to their ad copy.

Duncan Idaho --

Your doctor doesn't like you.

All the oxygen is burnt to CO, CO2 and Nitrous and a few other things. Even if there was only CO2 and no CO, you would die just as quickly (suffocation) it's just that your haemaglobin would not be carrying CO so it would be easier to revive you if anyone came along and bothered.

trotsky --

and others. You are missing the point. Maybe the air out is "cleaner" than air in, visibly. But whatever goes in comes out, plus the added fuel.

So, in a perfect world, which it is not, you still have all the CO2, some CO, particluates (more with diesel), nitrous oxides, and bits and pieces of a other chemicals, and H2O. All except H20 are pollutants. PERIOD.

The lower the MPG, the more you drive, the more pollutants.

Your eyes can only register pollutants when their side effects produce a visible event which, as many know, may depend on topography and weather, or when they sting. But we're all polluting.

I know that this is off topic, but dangerously false information like this needs to be stopped before it spreads.

Duncan Idaho at 9:51 PM: "...the CO content is low enough and the O2 is high enough to keep you alive for many hours or even days."

Duncan, your doctor is a real quack. People commit suicide every day by starting the car up with garage doors closed and nursing a bottle of wine till they "go to sleep". It doesn't take hours. A friend of mine did it a few months ago and his car had recently passed emissions.

Indeed if your car is exhausting oxygen in quantities anywhere near adequate to support life then it is so improperly tuned that it would fail an emissions test due to (unoxidized) hydrocarbons.

Buy a hybrid, Kevin.

If it's a gas guzzler, then it is putting out an enormous amount of CO2.

Don't tell me the trolls are argumentative and reflexive contrarians on an issue such as emissions as well?
Earlier I had a flat tire, and someone got tar all over my carpet, and when I looked at the many posts Kevin offered, I saw the decrepit trolls on each one of the boards.
We need an emissions test for the trolls

I DRIVE a Volvo, bet you're suprised! 95hp and 25 mpg! I also RIDE a Triumph, 45hp - 60mpg. I can only drive the Volvo on the freeway, and can only ride the Triumph at night, but this helps the carbon polution which is bad for the SO2. It is HELL after all!

Steve Sailer:

(e.g., California cars get significantly worse gas mileage because of the anti-smog technology),

Um, I call bullshit. Care to cite?

Yes, SoCal's air is much cleaner than the 70's. Yes, it cost money. It also saves lives. Plenty of environmentalists know all about this and deserve credit for bringing about the improvements. Yes, there is still a long way to go, particularly in the Central Valley.

Kevin,

Here are some interesting statistics: people drive approximately 202,517,000 mi/day in LA. LA has 12 million registered vehicles. So if you do the math for your CO level, say, every 50 cars taken together produce the maximum CO pollution allowed for one car. This turns out to be equivalent to 240,000 cars at the max for CO pollution (assuming everyone drives everyday).

The 14.5% CO2 exhaust isn't good news either. Although coal-burning power plants account for 2.5 billion tons of CO2 per year, cars account for 1.5 billion tons per year.

I'm not a math whiz. I know I didn't allow for hours driven, and I used the 12 million drivers number instead of the mileage/LA/day. Probably my conclusions are totally out of whack, but hopefully everyone gets the point.

Now you know what it's doing at a fast idle.

Aren't you curious what the emissions are at 7000 rpm as you pass grandma in the carpool lane or in 6th gear on your way to Las Vegas?

Apologies for being picky, Kevin, but if I read your test correctly (upper right) you scored a 4 for M1 NO, where the limit is 16. That's 25% of the limit.

I will attempt to return to meaningful comments soon.

See, this is why I try to stick to meaningful comments. My mistake. Average is 16, limit is 430, you are at

I can get by with a 1000cc sport bike. You should all do the same.

Mooser --

come to MN and do that! Maybe in 2075?

Of course, then it'll be a "monster" 6 hp solar/H2/human powered hybrid bike.

Enjoy it while you can.

Maybe I don't understand the form, but it looks to me like at 15 MPH, NO emissions were 16 PPM, 3.7% of the 430 PPM limit. Do I have that right?

Joel R --

that's what it looks like. If they are that far inside voluntarily now -- and I bet the requirements haven't been revised lately -- doesn't look like anyone was leaning on the manufacturers when the limits were set, does it?

In the 1960s, smog was so bad that it was usually impossible to see the Hollywood hills from a few miles away. Nowadays, I can see Hollywood and as far away as Mt San Antonio ("Old Baldy") from San Pedro. In other words, the visibility has improved by more than an order of magnitude. The stinging eye irritation that was common before emissions controls is absent. Irritation of the bronchial passages is also significantly decreased.

This has been accomplished in the presence of a huge increase in the number of cars and miles driven in the basin.

At the same time, diesel exhaust has increased, and regulation of diesel emissions is only now starting to come in (the 2007 standards will be a big improvement). Diesel engines produce something called ultrafine particles which go deep into the lungs and get into the blood stream. There is a world wide effort to research and solve this problem.

One improvement coming onstream is the use of low sulfur fuel by ships in port. The best estimates are that the combined effect of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach produce about 25 percent of the diesel particulate matter getting into our air. Maersk recently agreed to go to low sulfur fuel (replacing the old very high sulfur bunker fuel), and other shippers are expected to begin coming on line soon.

At the recent ultrafine particles conference held in Los Angeles, scientists and engineers pointed out that cars with catalytic converters are very clean in terms of particulates, CO, and nitrogen-containing compounds. This is due to the fact that modern electronic fuel injected cars control not only the output via the converter, but also the input; by controlling the fuel-air mix, efi cars limit the nitrogen-containing pollutants and therefore ozone and various other NOx contributions.

So Kevin is largely correct, in that his car produces way less pollution than the cars of the 1960s did, and this has contributed to much better air for us angelenos. Diesel is the next big hurdle in terms of pollution.

It's also good to note that your car is cleaner at 25mph than at 15mph. As to be expected. (engin is able to run better 3000-4000rpm, so a speed or acceleration that puts on higher load, keeping you under 4000rpm, for the gear should get you better efficiency.)

Doh! Actually, they are about the same. It'd be nice to see diffent RPMs.

All caused by cow flatulence. We need to smog Harris Ranch.Posted by: DOW on February 20, 2007 at 9:31 PM | PERMALINK

The catalytic converters they developed for automobile engines don't work on cows. For that, you need a cattleitic converter.
Posted by: TomB on February 20, 2007 at 9:35 PM | PERMALINK

Unexpected belly laugh award goes to TomB.

In the early days, catalytic converters often failed because people were illegally putting leaded gas into their tanks, and the lead and phosphorus poisoned the catalysts. Police departments and taxi companies were particularly notorious offenders. But now, leaded gas isn't available at the pump, and those few ancient clunkers that require lead have to have it added it specially, so catalysts works pretty much forever, or at least until the ceramic support fails mechanically.

Over 99% of the pollution from cars comes from a few cars that are not up to snuff. Yes, that car in front of you burning oil is the culprit. This is why going electric will reduce smog. When electric breaks, cars don't produce smog. When the ICE goes bad it burns oil.

And in the heavy intersections in Tokyo where air quality is poor, Takahiro Fujimoto told me, part of Watanabe’s vision is already real: “The emission gas of some advanced cars is in fact cleaner than the intake air.”

So much for my dream of moving to Tokyo to become a sumo wrestler.

I think those emissions test limits are also a lot looser than the manufacturers emissions test limits because they are designed more to make sure people repair thier cars rather than pollute like crazy and don't disconnect the things. So basically unless your car is really old and wearing out, really really needs some regular maintenence, has some specific defect, or you have modified it you ought to easily pass.

In particular the HC reading I beleive stands for Hydrocarbons, basically unburned gas, and can be greatly elevated in a car that simply badly needs a tuneup.

old us that the '07 Ford Focus we were test-driving qualifies as a PZEV, or "Partial zero-emissions vehicle", which he claimed made it, and I quote, "As clean as a hybrid"

It's actually CLEANER than a hybrid, especially when highway driving. And much closer to an all-electric car. I have an '03, when they didn't put that engine in everything. So it actually has more horsepower than the other models -- that was supposed to be the enticement to buy (not the cleaner air).

Hybrids are slow and the battery waste disposal issue has not been dealt with yet. My PZEV engined Focus has neither problem.

So, Kevin, what kind of car do you drive?

Just curious since you often post about global warming and how something should be done about it.

How frequent are the required emission tests and what percentage fail the test? It seems to me if the tests flag just a few failures then maybe they are not cost effective.

Tripp,

To answer your question, one would need to know what composition of the failing vehicles. If they are primarily pre-California-emissions standard-vehicles, then I would agree that the cost benefit analysis would likely not support the testing scheme presently in place that tests every vehicle regardless of age.

Anyone have the figures?

Interesting points about the efficiency of the latest Catalytic devices.

Sort of answers the questions of a previous thread about the superiority of cats - Have not read of any Dogalytic systems.

Yeah, right - People go to their doctor's all the time for "Dog-Scans".

Kevin -

There are two considerations here, but the bigger picture is where the beef is:
1) The MAX allowable numbers are actually on a sliding scale; they become more lenient as your car gets older. This is done for two reasons - it allows for normal wear over the life of the car, and it keeps the pass rate for the total population of cars at a politically acceptable figure. If your car were to be tested to the standards for a new car, it might well fail.
2) Nowadays, all cars have computer-controlled fuel injection engines (and have since 1990 or earlier). The computer continuously monitors emmissions and adjusts the engine accordingly. So, yes, modern smog equipment is that good on all cars.

However, this brings up a bigger issue. In my state, (Washington), the vehicle emission responsibility is contracted out to a private firm, Sun Systems. Further, I think this same firm, Sun Systems has this same contract in many other states, if not nationally. However, since computer-controlled automotive emission systems are now so good, as you say, just exactly what value is Sun Systems providing? You take your car to the testing station, you pay your 20 bucks, the guy runs the test, your car passes and off you go. Where's the benefit? Sure, occasionally they'll fail some clunker, but again very few.

I've discussed this with my peers, and we don't see that Sun Systems is providing any real benefit at this point in time. Rather, it looks to us that they have, in fact, found a government-approved racket, to the sole benefit of Sun Systems. Investigation time?

Frank Starr, P.E.
Seattle

Note that for testing purposes, emissions are measured in PPM, as opposed to actual quantity of pollutants. This is where the American auto industry got its victory.

A high mpg car like my Civic and Kevin's gas guzzler could show similar test results, yet Kevin's car will still be putting out more pollutants, simply because it takes in more air (to be burned along with a correspondingly high amount of gasoline) and therefore much more exhaust as well.

I have an old British sports car - to pass emissions in the late 70s without otherwise changing the engine they installed an air pump that injects air directly into the combustion cylinders. The additional oxygen helps marginally by producing a cleaner spark, leaving less unburnt fuel, and aids the catalytic converter as well, but also produces more exhaust thereby diluting it and reducing smog readings.

Using your car exhaust to commit suicide is not recommended. Yah, you can kill yourself, but the new cars are clean enough that a lot of people just end up with serious brain damage (maybe this is what happened to Americanhawk).

A few cars do cause a disproportionate share of the smog. A bad actor can emit pollution equivalent to a hundred or more clean cars. If you walk along the road you can easily detect the stinkers just by smelling. There seems to be a lot of resistance to getting the junkers off the roads, perhaps because so many people are dependent on them for transportation.

The manufacturer standards are more rigorous than the drive in state emission tests. They include cold starts and degradation over the expected 100,000 mile life of the car. Here in Washington state (and by the way, when I tested my car last week, the print out did have test numbers) they don’t test new cars because they always pass, and they don’t test old cars because they always fail. The primary intent is just to make sure people with middle age cars get a proper tune up now and again.

While we are talking about auto emissions, y'all might want to think about this as well:

One old gas powered lawn mower running for an hour emits as much pollution as driving 650 miles in a 1992 model automobile.

In 1998, the EPA issued the so called "Phase I" rules, which mandated a 32 percent reduction in emissions for small "non-road" engines. This affects all engines less than 25 horsepower produced after 1997, including mowers, leaf blowers and chain saws.

In March 2000, the EPA ordered major cuts in emissions from lawnmowers, chainsaws, leaf blowers and other small engine powered equipment. By 2007, when the new standards will be fully in place, the ground level ozone pollution caused by these engines will be cut by 70 percent or 350,000 tons each year.

Sounds good, right? What has happened since March 2000?

December 2006: The Environmental Protection Agency granted California long-awaited permission Monday to slash emissions from lawn mowers and other small-engine machines, a change it will seek nationally next year.

The EPA waiver will allow the nation's most populous state, starting Jan. 1, to require highly polluting small engines to be sold with catalytic converters that cut smog emissions by roughly 40 percent.

The EPA action Monday ended several years of political dispute driven by Republican Sen. Kit Bond, whose state of Missouri is home to two factories owned by Briggs & Stratton Corp., the largest U.S. small-engine maker.

Bond backed off under pressure from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., but he did succeed in blocking other states from being able to copy California's rule, something the Clean Air Act normally allows. Instead, he required the EPA to write a national standard.

More here on Bond's effort to block California's enactment of clean-air standards for lawn and garden equipment powered by small engines - and the motivation behind it.

However, I can't seem locate any information regarding whether or not we are on track to hit the emission-cutting goals of the March 2000 EPA order...Or even if the order was enacted.

Derek –

The local test standards may be in ppm because total emissions are harder to measure, but I am pretty sure the federal standards are absolute quantities. The local testers enter a standard weight for the vehicle being tested into the computer, which then adjusts the ppm limits appropriately.

It turns out large engines can have somewhat of an advantage in that the reduced surface to volume ratio of a larger combustion chamber can result in lower emissions – i.e. small engines in small cars are not always as much cleaner than large engines in large cars as one might expect. This effect applies primarily to CO and HC emissions, and not at all to CO2 which is directly proportional to the amount of gas consumed.

...to pass emissions in the late 70s without otherwise changing the engine they installed an air pump that injects air directly into the combustion cylinders....

Posted by: Derek on February 21, 2007 at 12:46 PM | PERMALINK

Ah, no. That would be supercharging.

What they and a large number of manufacturers, did in the immediate aftermath of the enviro regs was to pump air and therefore more O2 into the hot exhaust to continue burning partially burnt product; carbon, nitrous, sulphur, etc.

The pump was actually a drag on power output and induced higher fuel use and, therefore, greater tonnage of total if less damaging pollutants.

It was a short-term inefficient get-around. Those early enviro US V-8s had seriously degraded power compared to the pre-clean series.

I live near San Francisco. When I got my car smog tested they used a gadget with rollers built in to the floor so that the car could be tested at a variety of engine speeds and loads.

Understanding pollution produced by hybrids is problematic. If I drive my Prius on a freeway the ICE is running constantly and pollutes like a regular car. In stop and go traffic or on hilly roads the ICE can be off for long periods. When it starts up I wonder how clean it is for the first few seconds? I know the Prius does have a sort of thermos bottle to maintain the temperature of the engine coolant during these idle periods. I guess you have to balance that against the relatively long periods of coasting or running on battery power.

>If they are that far inside voluntarily now --

Hell if I'm going to do any research (it's a blog post after all) but my memory is telling me jefffff is correct: off the assembly line they have to meet much tighter standards, and can get in real trouble if it's found out they don't.

In fact Ford had a real problem with some car where they got busted, and when they modified it the thing would hardly ever start cold. But it never failed an emissions test.

Also this isn't like a human being "getting in shape" where improvement is a continuous slope. Once you have an O2 sensor, a cat, and microprocessor you jump quite a bit in cleanliness. So it isn't like they said "Ok, we are *this* clean so we'll stop spending money on getting cleaner".

As a data point to the discussion about variable standards for cars of different ages -- that really is the case. My 1995 Ford Contour just got smogged today, so the paperwork is right at hand. Check out the differences between Kevin's newer guzzler and my old passenger car, both in maximum and measured values:

Hydrocarbons (PPM)
M1
Kevin's max value: 54
Kevin's measured value: 0
My max value: 100
My measured value: 13
M2
Kevin's max value: 37
Kevin's measured value: 0
My max value: 130
My measured value: 4

CO (%)
M1
Kevin's max value: .50
Kevin's measured value: 0.01
Mv max value: 1.00
My measured value: 0.12
M2
Kevin's max value: .47
Kevin's measured value: 0.00
My max value: 1.00
My measured value: 0.00

They didn't even perform the NO test for my decade-old car.

Of course, all that and I didn't even pass smog, because they failed me on the functional EGR. :-( At least the $160 repair should fix the "Check Engine" light that's been on for quite some time now.

I expect the standards for emissions requirments for lawnmover to be a net benefit, but it's also interesting that the driving force isn't pollution, it's to cut some company's competition out of the market.