THE next slide (slide =4) shows one made for hydro-carbon. What this says is that back in 1940 for the total country, we have something under 20,000 tons a day for the total passenger car population....

For every one of those passenger cars on the dotted line we've had 567 grams a day of hydro-carbon. So simple multiplication shows continual increase into the atmosphere of hydro-carbon.

We begin to deviate from that ever increasing line along about the early 1960's, reach a maximum in the mdi-1960's and as of today the total hydro-carbon emissions are on the decline and they're going to continue to become less and less as time goes along and will reach a minimum around 1980.

About that time the passenger car will begin to catch up with the level of control and the line of hydro-carbon emission will gradually begin to rise again.

The next slide (slide =5) shows what the very similar pattern for carbon monoxide is....

Modifying the Internal Combustion Engine

So what we're saying here is along about 1980 all cars would have the best control systems we know how to make along back in 1970. But the new cars are only replacing the old cars at a rate of 7-10 per cent per year.

What can we do for the used cars in order to help in this decline?

Recent Improvement

One of the approaches is one that we have announced recently and will be available through dealers for all pre-1968 models. It amounts to changing the vacuum advance on the distributor with a high temperature override so it won't overheat. This total packet has been announced on our dealer list for $9.05 plus labor.

It will decrease hydro-carbons by about 50 per cent, it will decrease oxides of nitrogen about 30 per cent on average and carbon monoxide some 35 per cent. This in itself will again hasten the decline of pollution in the atmosphere.

1975 Standards

Now what about these 1975 kinds of numbers we talked about? How are we going to get down there? We in General Motors have taken two approaches to that. One is a change of power plant-go to a gas turbine, steam engine, electric car, sterling engine, or what not. Another approach is what can we continue to do with the gas engine.... We might change the kind of fuel we are using and go to a gaseous fuel-liquefied petroleum (LPG) or compressed natural gas-these have been proposed with a fair amount of notoriety. The engine would be quite similar to the present engine with some minor changes. This system can be made, we can run them, we are running them. We have quite a few right now. The whole Chicago transit system operates on LPG.

This system gives hydro-carbon levels that would meet 1975 kinds of problems. It would give carbon monoxide levels meeting the 1975 requirements. It won't do the job on oxides of nitrogen.

Another approach we can take with essentially the engine we have today is the so-called catalytic approach. And this amounts to putting a catalyst essentially in place of the present muffler. This is usually an oxidizing catalyst because we have to somehow burn up the carbon monoxide, hydro-carbon.... Right now, for example, one of the major problems of lead in gasoline, is coating the catalyst and the catalyst doesn't last very long....

Manifold Reactor

Another possibility is the so-called manifold reactor and in this case it's a rich one. But this call for enlarging the present exhaust manifold on the engine.... In this case, the engine-in order to control all pollutants that we talked about-takes about 25 per cent more fuel than the present engine. However, this can be done and it does work. Again we have cars built and running today.

The next slide shows one of the combinations you can put together-one of several that we have running. This one includes electronic fuel injection along with so-called recirculation... to control oxides of nitrogen....

Lead Gas Problem

We have had problems with all of the models shown here working with the lead in the gasoline. Let me enumerate some of them: