Near-zero emissions from gasoline engines

In particular, there would ultimately be a significant effect on the ability of world motorsport to defend an image that can still come under attack by environmental activists.

The three-year SELEV programme is being conducted at UCR by its Bourns College of Engineering's Center for Environmental Research & Technology (CE-CERT), which was endowed in 1992 with a $10m grant from Ford. CE-CERT established SELEV in June 2000 to understand the impact that new-generation vehicles have on overall air quality. Its aims are to determine how low the level of emissions from certain internal combustion engines can go, how minute quantities of emissions can be measured, and how new emission control technologies will affect overall air quality.

In the 1990s, it was widely believed that a change to 'alternative' fuels would be required to achieve the mandate for ultra-low emission vehicles (ULEV) established by the state of California. However the California Air Resources Board now lists more than 90 gasoline-fuelled 2002 car models that meet the ULEV standard.