The second generation of onboard diagnostic (OBD) technology has been required by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on light-duty vehicles and trucks (LDV/Ts) since 1996 model year (MY) vehicles.
OBD is designed to monitor, detect and indicate faults in critical emission control components/systems and emission-related components.
Inspection and maintenance (I/M) programs are currently present in 36 states in the U.S., the British Columbia and Ontario provinces in Canada, and in several European Union countries. As a result of increasingly stringent emission standards, OBD has been implemented in existing I/M programs to replace traditional, tailpipe emission measurement equipment. This paradigm shift represents an opportunity to streamline I/M programs further by conducting remote vehicle inspections of OBD-equipped vehicles.
To support its I/M stakeholders, the EPA's Office of Transportation and Air Quality (OTAQ) examined the possible methods of performing remote vehicle inspections: cellular- or satellite-based, long-range data transmission; wireless, short-range data transmission; and a portable, plug-and-play device.
Based on this examination, the EPA-OTAQ determined that the plug-and-play device option needed to be examined further, since other options have previously been or are being explored.
As a result, the EPA-OTAQ's National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory (NVFEL) collaborated under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with Davis Instruments, Inc., a U.S. company based in Hayward, California, to develop a portable, plug-and-play OBD device. Based on Davis Instruments' Carchip, an OBDcompatible flight recorder, NVFEL and Davis Instruments created the Carchip Green, which is designed to retrieve and transfer OBD I/M parameters needed to perform remote OBD I/M vehicle inspections.
Carchip Green connects to the standardized OBD connector on all OBD-equipped vehicles and collects the status checks (i.e., readiness status), the condition (i.e., pass or fail), and the presence of fault codes for the monitored emission control components/systems.
Carchip Green can be connected to a desktop or laptop computer with resident Carchip software to retrieve, format, store and transmit the OBD I/M-related data.
There are several possible scenarios for implementation of Carchip Green into existing OBD I/M programs:
- Point-to-point delivery
- Third-party distribution
- Wireless access point.
Carchip Green is anticipated to significantly enhance OBD I/M programs by reducing administrative costs while increasing public convenience, fleet coverage, and acceptance of OBD I/M programs and remote vehicle inspections.
