What is to come of vehicle tuning?
The world of aftermarket tuning may slowly be being turned on its head, over the last 10 years the EPA in the US has been looking to clean up dirty emissions from the aftermarket industry, where this is going and what will we be able to tune moving forward remains to be seen.
The Clean air act is a 50-year-old law Federal law that authorizes the EPA to establish air quality standards to protect public health and welfare and to regulate the emission of hazardous air pollutants.
For many years the EPA has set its sights on large corporations responsible for breaching air and water quality regulations, one such well know case was diesel gate where in 2015 the EPA issued a violation notice to the Volkswagen group who had been found to be designing their vehicles to pass an emission test as opposed to actually passing emissions in normal use, the software on the car could identify when the test procedure was being performed and would modify the vehicle tune to be compliant for the test. Since this other vehicle manufacturers have been found to be using the same techniques, Mercedes Daimler, Fiat Chrysler, Hyundai Kia and others.
More recently the EPA has looked towards the aftermarket, rolling coal tunes, DPF and Catalytic converter deletes seen as cheap performance upgrades have meant as a result the aftermarket has caught the attention of the EPA, and its no surprise really when one DPF deleted rolling coal diesel can produce 60 times the emissions of a stock vehicle. In many respects the industry and the customers bought this on themselves. Looking cool on YouTube smoking out pedestrians may look funny but was never going to go unchecked.
There is now an extensive list of aftermarket companies, initially larger but now also small family businesses, that have felt the rath of the EPA. Fines exceeding $1000 per vehicle offence for component sales that defeat emissions, criminal inditements for conspiracy to “Intentionally Violate the Clean Air Act” with $250 000 fines and jail time, those modifying vehicles need to have a serious think about whether it’s worth it and what modifications should be done. A quick survey of the EPA site soon reveals the fines ranging from the tens of thousands to millions for selling devices allowing the modification or removal of emission devices to tuning with readily available aftermarket tuning software.
Most recently to fall victim, Cobb (Green speed,) have a forced software update to all their tuning tools with significantly reduced map access to areas that are deemed to impact emissions having received 88 CARB Executive orders. Other Tuning software companies are scrambling, trying to satisfy the EPA and not lose the consumer, already HP Tuners, EFI Live, Diablosport, SCT/Bullydog, UpRev, APR and numerous others have already been fined, approached, or warned by the EPA to clean up their act with fines and forced improvement plans into the millions of dollars. Green Speed Update (April 2022) - COBB Tuning
Not even the little guy is safe, having a name for yourself as a good tuner in the US these days may be like having a target on your back, Evans Tuning a smaller well respected Pennsylvania tuner recently found to be in breach of the Clean air act on 103 occasions was liable for tens and maybe hundreds of thousands in fines although the Civil fine was reduced to $4223 due to an inability to pay the full amount Evans has also agreed to cease any activity or sales of parts that can impact emissions, having to demonstrate all future works do not impact the operation of the OBD systems. A breach of this order would likely result in jail time and further fines. The list below from the Consent agreement shows nothing out of the ordinary for the average tune shop to be doing.
Here in Australia, we are not immune to the impacts of this, most workshops offering tuning will be using one or more of the OE tuning products available from the US.
You can forget about code delete for Catalytic and DPF Removal and due to less effective aftermarket Catalytic converters, at least from the major software brands for now, there will no doubt be a smaller underground tuning scene using tuning tools from outside the US, but that becomes limiting as there will be no US dealers for these products, and it is likely only a matter of time before the EPA and the long arm of the law will continue to track down and punish individuals tuning having made the larger software companies compliant. A similar trend is likely to be seen in Europe, many countries are similarly cracking down, Japan already has heavy fines and makes the modification of new vehicles very difficult.
It is inevitable that the large brand software companies will comply in the US, whether some will run the gauntlet in other countries in an attempt to maintain market share remains to be seen, if they can Geofence the software and hardware for regions like the UAE that don’t care, maybe, but there is always the risk Australia and European countries follow suit and like the US and start to hand out hefty fines and jail terms. It is unlikely in Australia, which is ridiculously unregulated in automotive, we have not even managed to license mechanics and brake pads can be made of cheese. To think the Federal or State governments could regulate tuning in the near future is very unlikely although in my opinion mechanics and tuners should have a minimum standard of training and be regulated as currently the market is based on internet celebrity not competence. Many modifications have been illegal in Australia since the inception of emission standards and ADR’s here in 1969. Despite the already high fines for emission in tampering in Australia, Court imposed fines of up to $22000 for individuals and $44000 for companies, it has been no deterrent as fines seem to be very few and far between.
There will undoubtably be a rise in hacked, opensource and binary editing software, much of which has come from Russia (problem) in the past, but there is no shortage of groups, forums and open-source information that will continue to find the software bytes to change for emission defeats. The cost of tuning may go up if two pieces of software are used, one for code deletion and a second for tuning. The legitimate software companies being the biggest losers, from which with reduced revenue will come reduced development, already many tuners have “work around” solutions for reducing licensing costs which may continue to damage an already uncertain future.
Expect to lose Pops and crackles from the large software suppliers, or if you do have it with stock Catalytic converters expect to be replacing OE catalytic converters that will fail rate due to the excessive temperatures associated with Pops and crackles. High flow catalytic converters will no longer be able to be used without an annoying engine light, tuners that lean out Catalyst enrichment for more power will cause the premature failure of OE Catalytic converters resulting in high replacement costs, typically in the thousands of dollars for OE catalytic converters. If your car is tuned already with these codes off that shouldn’t change, it is unlikely any software supplier will modify tune files on a personal computer to restore factory code settings on the chance the vehicle may be retuned, but it is certainly possible… Bad tuning will no longer be able to be masked with the blanket deletion of codes which will result in greater consumer awareness as those engine lights indicate faults previously hidden.
Having been in the performance aftermarket industry for nearly 30 years modifying and tuning cars I find I am often torn between what is legal and where I sit morally. I greatly enjoy the challenge of making a modified car run well, and in doing so reducing the emissions as much as possible from the modified car, there is no need to have poorly tuned cars running around, why tuners remove oxygen sensors and don’t tune for maximum efficiency is lost on me, an efficient car is powerful and economical. The industry is large, it would be a huge loss to an already crippled industry since the loss of vehicle manufacturing if it was to be shut down. Just because the aftermarket here is unregulated and basically a free for all does not mean as tuners, we need not be socially irresponsible. If we do better as an industry and educate the consumers rather than bending to every request there is a greater likelihood the industry can continue to survive, with the advent of electric cars and much tighter OE vehicle security preventing ECU access we are already on borrowed time.
2020 Clean Air Act Vehicle and Engine Enforcement Case Resolutions | US EPA