Discussions with CARB and the EPA on the future of performance parts

ProDarwin said:

Sooner or later a failed cat will be one of the most common reasons to total a car :(

 

You may be surprised that there's less than half of the metal today than 20 years ago to meet the same standard.  

That, and the requirements is that the catalyst lasts 150,000 miles and still meet the standard, the catalyst doesn't technically fail until they are 1.5x the standard.  And given how all OEM's have a lot of leeway to make sure they make it, at 150k, it's roughly 1/2 the way to light the MIL light if everything keeps working.

When the car gets to be $1000, then yea, a proper catalyst would be about half that.

I get the requirements.  To be honest I don't have a lot of faith in many emissions systems to make it that far beyond 150k unless those miles are put on in one hell of a hurry.  I hope I'm wrong.  Then of course the downside is if those miles are NOT put on in a hurry, when cats fail the car value is lower and the manufacturer is less likely to be producing them so you have availability issues as well.

Just pointing out that OEM cats are expensive.  Plus the installation requirements and you are staring down a very expensive repair, all things considered.  For example I just looked up the price for a 2010 Fusion.  $570 for the front, $600 for the rear.  I can't imagine labor on that is less than a few hours, so you are probably looking at a $1500-2000 repair when the cat gives up.

I checked for an '02 Taurus and I don't see an OEM one available.  Same with an '02 Focus.

In reply to ProDarwin :

Funny that the second catalyst costs more than the front- there's about 1/10th of the precious metal on them- making them about 1/8 the cost.  More to it than metal.

But we make them to be meeting the rules at 150k, and all of the parts are tested to make it that far.  When it's there, the emissions should be somewhere between 60-80% of the actual standard, too.  

Oh, and 150k is the current standard, the '10 Fusion would be either 120k or 150k depending on the state.

That's front and rear bank for a V6, not first/second.

Also, if you want to see some truly expensive stuff, look up the cats for a diesel pickup.  Like $1700 for each bank.  

That's because they're just plain huge. The DPF is not a cheap date either. 

I'm curious to see what happens in 2 years when I take my 911 through emissions here in Colorado again.  Now that the cats have to have an EO number, they could fail my car.  My exhaust has good HJS cats but they don't have an EO number.  It would suck to have to swap the stock exhaust back on. 

I may get lucky, all they do is OBD2 scan the car and check the gas cap...

In reply to docwyte :

If it's like NY, you can't buy or install a non Cali cat for a Cali emissions car, but they don't actually look for the EO numbers at inspection.  So anything modded before that rules change doesn't present an issue. 

The new CO law prevents the sale or installation of non-CA cats. It does not prevent you from running one that is already installed. The inspection is for an "EPA"  cat.

It is unlawful for any person to install, sell, offer for sale, or advertise any Aftermarket Catalytic Converter intended for use on any motor vehicle originally equipped with catalytic converter(s) in Colorado unless it has been exempted pursuant to the requirements of California Code of Regulations, Title 13, Section 2222 (h) (i.e. a “California Aftermarket Catalytic Converter”).

ProDarwin said:

Sooner or later a failed cat will be one of the most common reasons to total a car :(

 

It isn't already?

What do you think happens when people trade in a car that fails emissions?  Goes to auction, scrapyard buys it.

ProDarwin said:

That's front and rear bank for a V6, not first/second.

Left and right.  

More and more I am getting more entrenched into my plan of all of my "fuel" vehicles (gas or diesel) being pre-emissions and my "modern" runabout vehicle being an EV.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

ProDarwin said:

Sooner or later a failed cat will be one of the most common reasons to total a car :(

 

It isn't already?

What do you think happens when people trade in a car that fails emissions?  Goes to auction, scrapyard buys it.

I would say its not that common now although it definitely happens..  Too many cars are still worth enough to justify the repair.  There are still plenty of non-oem (47 state?) sources for cats that are an order of magnitude cheaper than the OEM 50-state stuff.  Additionally there are still plenty of places that dont emissions test so people are happy to just keep driving with no cat at all.

FWIW, I am not arguing in favor of worse emissions or less regulation.  If anything I would suggest that part of the emissions requirements for manufacturers is to produce these items at a reasonable price for a reasonable number of years. 

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

ProDarwin said:

That's front and rear bank for a V6, not first/second.

Left and right.  

Semantics... Ford calls them front/rear on the Fusion.

As we've noted before - the reason the less effective cats are cheaper is because they have far fewer precious metals in them. OE cats can be worth hundreds in scrap metal value, so asking the manufacturers to make them cheaper is asking them to sell for awfully close (or less than) cost. Our local scrap metal place won't even take aftermarket cats but they'll pay $85 for a tiny Miata OE part.

Keith Tanner said:

so asking the manufacturers to make them cheaper is asking them to sell for awfully close (or less than) cost. 

I would love to see numbers on this.  To me the OE Part markups look similar to other repair items, where manufacturers charge 10x or more what they pay for the part.  As Alfa said, as they get more efficient for various reasons they are also reducing the amount of metal in them so from a material standpoint they should be getting less expensive.

Also, if cars were designed in such a way that the cat was replaceable and not part of a giant exhaust manifold/downpipe,etc. assembly it might drive down replacement cost a bunch.  I'd rather everyone pay $50 more up front for their car if it reduces the chance of it being emissions-totaled by 80%.

Well, just compare what a scrap metal dealer will pay for an OE cat. And think about how much effort it is to turn that chunk of mixed metals into pure ones that can then be built into new units with people taking a profit every step of the way - and the end result has to be price competitive with non-recycled materials. Yeah, the cost of the raw materials is high. You can get an OE NA Miata cat for about $600, and scrap value is roughly $85. How much does that scrap value multiply? Mazda certainly isn't selling them for 10x cost, that's for sure.

And why should they have to sell for the cost of the materials? I see this in our industry too - anything more than the base cost of producing a single part is viewed as robbery. Never mind the R&D, the investment in tooling/models/patterns/whatever, the shipping to our shop, the taxes we have to pay on inventory, the cost of the warehouse, the cost of the people to package things and the cost to ship to a customer...the sheer logistics of trying to keep an OE sized parts supply running at minimal overhead is not a trivial undertaking, and it s a very different business from popping out cars with JIT manufacturing. The sheer number of parts boggles the mind, and any of them are prone to redesign at any point. And then you either have to build and warehouse enough to cover demand until the vehicle reaches EOL or you have to start the line back up again in a few years for an obsolete part - and that's far, far more expensive than the first time it was running.  So yeah, there's serious overhead.

There might be a bunch of reasons as to why a cat is 6' long. Maybe it's ease of production. Maybe it's ease of assembly. Maybe it's packaging for a flange, or eliminating potential leak points. I agree that keeping that replacement  cost as low as possible is a good idea but there may be other factors. 

I'm not saying they need to sell it at cost.  I am saying a fair price and produce it for a reasonable amount of time.  I don't know how to determine a fair price, but I am sure there are other examples in various industries.  I would think that the cost of current parts is a bit extreme.   Especially when you look at parts that are being used on the assembly line right now.  Maybe it isn't a 10x markup, but it seems high, like most service parts.

I'm sure that cost, ease of production, and assembly are all factors in why a cat assembly is 6' long.  I get that.  Reducing part count is huge.

It just sucks that regulation that is intended to be 'green' in the sense that it reduces smog, can result in taking cars off the road needlessly similar to cash for clunkers.  Only in this case you don't get paid for it.  I think there should be some thought given to making emissions control items serviceable at a reasonable cost vs. a 150k target then discard the vehicle.  Consider that some perhaps will not take it off the road - they will fix it with less effective parts, or run it broken in a state/county without emissions checks (or fool the O2 sensor).  How long does a car need to run after the death of its cat to offset the emissions?

In reply to ProDarwin :

If the converter wasn't part of the manifold/downpipe/whatever, the vehicle might not meet emissions standards at all.  Or, best case, it would require additional, much more failure prone items like air pumps and their attendant hardware, or catalyst heaters.

That said the converters aren't too terribly bad to change in most OE applications.  At least they look that way, because converter replacement is not something I really ever see needing to be done.  In the last two years I have replaced one converter.  Most emissions failures I see are evaporative related, or variable timing related.  People aren't interested in getting their oil changed twice as often to stave off timing chain stretch at the car's end of life, why would they spend the money up front to make a converter cheaper to replace when they probably will never need to replace it?

ProDarwin said:

How long does a car need to run after the death of its cat to offset the emissions?

The issue here is comparing apples and bears, so it's not simple. You would have to look at total life emissions from the entire supply chain on the vehicle in question, and the replacement vehicle. Once the cat goes, the NOx will fly through the roof, which seems like a much worse thing. Now if your new vehicle production has a large gas footprint (including NOx) maybe the argument of keep it rolling, cat or no, makes sense. I have the feeling though that the factory emissions are quite low per vehicle due to better regulations on stack emissions vs tailpipe.

(edit) found this snipped "The impact of 1 pound of N₂O on warming the atmosphere is almost 300 times that of 1 pound of carbon dioxide.^1" posted at https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases, where the excess NOx from vehicle emissions would be converted to N2O once it gets back onto the soil

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

why would they spend the money up front to make a converter cheaper to replace when they probably will never need to replace it?

Because they don't have an option as that could built into the regulation.  People would never voluntarily add $800 (arbitrary number, but seems reasonable) to the price of a vehicle to make it emissions compliant, but they don't have an option.

On the subject of apples and bears:  The first google result on effectivity says this:

By most estimates, catalytic converters fitted inside the exhaust pipe of a gasoline-operated car convert over 90% of hydrocarbons (HC), carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen oxides (NO_x) from the engine into less harmful carbon dioxide (CO₂), nitrogen and water vapour.

There is likely some bias there, given the source, but for the sake of discussion, lets use that value.  So a car from 0-150k emits X emissions.  If the cat fails at 150k, then in the next 15k miles, it emits X again.  And every 15k after.  That's a gigantic jump in emissions.  

I don't know what the #s look like with the non-oem replacement cats.  Are they 80% as effective as OEM?  20%? 

In reply to ProDarwin :

Two things- why do you assume that there's not a markup for the aftermarket?  Their investment in making "replacement" parts is actually a lot higher per part than OEM's, as we just make more of hte original part, and the remaining cost is just storage of the parts for 10 years.  We don't make any money on replacement parts- the market is just too small relative to making new cars.

So in terms of efficiency- for the upcoming rules, (as that's what I track, not old ones) compared to the standard, the catalysts are just over 99% efficient on average for the entire test.  For the most part, vehicles put out ~8 g/mi of NMOG + NOx, and we will be allowed 0.030 g/mi over the same test.  In reality, the cars are actually putting out 0.02-0.025 g/mi at 150k, just to be safe.

The allowance for lighting a light is 1.5x the standard, or 0.045g/mi.  So while the cars are designed to meet a low target, the rule makers allow more until a fault is noted.  This math is essentially the same for whatever standard for the last 20 years- so for a ULEVII that would be 0.090g/mi standard, allowance up to 0.135 g/mi until a fault is noted.  

In terms of how they fail, it's pretty gradual for normal wear.  The only why catalyst suddenly fail is misfire (which is sort of protected) and physical damage.  The rest is just a slow failure, mostly from heat and phosphorus poisonoing.  

Still, the aftermarket mark up is there, which gives you an idea how cheap the parts are.  If one is lucky, then the part you buy is the same manufacturer of the part for the OEM- which saves a little money.  Many of those parts fail OEM QC standards, but are ok for the aftermarket.

The standard for the aftermarket is that they are supposed to demonstrate the original emission standard when they are brand new, and that's it.  I'm not sure how rigorous the process is to prove it, but it's still not the same as OE.  But that is supposed to protect catalysts for specific packages as opposed to general, universal, replacements.

There are some cars and emissions standards tha have a "universal fit" replacement- but as time goes on, and standards have gotten lower, and poor replacement parts are found- that will be less and less over time.

alfadriver (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to ProDarwin :

Two things- why do you assume that there's not a markup for the aftermarket?  Their investment in making "replacement" parts is actually a lot higher per part than OEM's, as we just make more of hte original part, and the remaining cost is just storage of the parts for 10 years.  We don't make any money on replacement parts- the market is just too small relative to making new cars.

I didn't assume that.  I know they have a markup just like everyone else.

FWIW, I've worked at a Tier 1 and watched a line run replacement parts before.  Instead of a 3 day (9 shift) run, it might only be a 2-shift run, and only once per 6 months, but the cost of that run, per part couldn't have been more than 5% higher than normal.  Those parts were sold to the OEM during the original run at ~$10 each and are around $105 on a discount website.  I fully expect a markup, but I'm not understanding how there is that much of a markup, esp. if they are not making any profit on them.

When you're looking at the cost of that run, you're only looking at the price per part. How much did it cost to swap the line over both physically and bureaucratically? How much downtime was there? 

Low priced parts are the ones that are going to show the highest percentage of markup. It costs just as much to track and inventory and do logistics on a $1 screw as it does on a $6000 engine. Shipping and warehousing costs will be higher on the bigger part but not proportionally so. So you can't take the markup on a part that cost $10 and extrapolate that to one that costs $200.

Ballpark, I think its roughly 8hrs labor for the changeover.  That's why I was guessing 5%.  The line produced ~1 part per min, 7 hours/shift.  Thats a run of 840 parts.  Factor in the extra 8 hours at say $50/hr and that's $400, which increases part price by around 50 cents.  There are inventory costs as well, but those parts shared a lot of inventory with many other parts still in production.

I am genuinely interested in how much the cost is for warehousing parts.  Those parts would take up ~48sq feet of floor or rack space at the supplier.  At the manufacturer its probably 3x that if they are boxing them for individual sale.

What IS the cost of a cat on a new car right now?  Seems like from a BOM standpoint it must be 5% of the total?

I know that in our warehouse, there are costs involved in inventory (gotta count those buggers to make sure the numbers are right) and we have to pay taxes every year on our inventory value. So if you're producing a 5 year supply of this part, the last part sold will have been taxed 5 times. There may be more but I'm not involved directly in that stuff.