California High Emitter Program

California Assembly Bill 953 authorized the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) to use Carl Moyer funds, traditionally reserved for voluntary retrofit/replacement of high polluting heavy duty vehicles, for a voluntary light duty vehicle (LDV) repair/retirement program.

The pilot, which started in spring 2007, examines whether LDV high emitters can be solicited to participate in voluntary repair and/or retirement through incentives that offer up to $500 for repair and up to $3,000 for retirement to qualified motorists.
Despite the rigorous restrictions on who qualifies as a high emitter under the Carl Moyer rules, 25,000 high emitters were identified for solicitation in a program that collected over 1.8 million measurements of more than 700,000 unique SCAQMD registered vehicles. Using three of our RSD4600 units, the data collection effort continued this spring. Results showed the rate of high emitters in the SCAQMD area to be higher than most inspected US light duty vehicle fleets.