From an email.............
Here is an article that says alot about the market niche for ESW's Quiet Cat technology.
The companys ( ESWW ) timing in introducing its products into the U.S. marketplace is a little behind IMHO, but still good. It all depends on how ESW's technology stacks up against Cornings ceramic-based technology.
May 23, 2002 PR
"It is very exciting to see our proprietary diesel catalytic products performing so well while being tested side-by-side with conventional ceramic-based diesel catalytic products."
Who at this time controls the substrate market for emissions controls? Corning!
We have a long way to go, but we have our foot in the door.
Just some thoughts.
Walter
INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT & TECHNOLOGY
Dirty Little Engines Get Cleaner
For years two-strokes spewed blue smoke. Then the pollution police sent the manufacturers to the drawing boards.
FORTUNE
Wednesday, May 1, 2002
By Matthew Boyle
Meeting the standards with two-strokes was on the face of it much more difficult. PPEMA, the handheld industry's trade group (Portable Power Equipment Manufacturers Association), argued that the second tier of California regulations would "virtually eliminate" all two-stroke gasoline engine products in the state. Yet much to the chagrin of PPEMA and most of its members, two companies were able to meet the advanced standards well before the deadline.
One was RedMax-Komatsu Zenoah America, a Norcross, Ga., subsidiary of Japan's Komatsu. RedMax spent $1.5 million on a "stratified charge" design, which injects a shot of pure air between the exhaust gases and the fresh charge of fuel coming in. Instead of losing a third of the fuel to the exhaust, the engine emits air. To accomplish that, RedMax worked with its carburetor supplier, Walbro, to build a new two-barrel carburetor. Japanese engineers originally dubbed the engine Air Head but quickly scrapped that name when the Americans explained what the expression means in their country.
RedMax's Strato-charge engine received mixed reviews at first, mainly because it ran quieter, and users equate noise with power. But customers warmed to it when they found it cut fuel consumption by 34%. The engine received a ringing endorsement in 1999 when Stihl bought 60,000 of them to help make its products compliant in California.
Japanese-owned Tanaka also met the regulations, but in a different way. First, it worked alongside rather than against CARB, receiving funding from the state for a joint fuel-injection research project that has not yet yielded a consumer-ready product but signaled Tanaka's realization that fighting the regulatory tide was pointless. "We recognized [the agency's] conviction," says vice president Randy Haslam. "There was no way they were going to back off the rule."
On its own Tanaka came up with a design, dubbed PureFire, that involves a stratified charge plus a catalytic converter in the muffler to clean the exhaust gases. The use of converters is hotly debated in handheld circles. They convert emissions to water and carbon dioxide, but they are expensive, add weight to the product, and produce high-temperature exhaust exceeding 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Since the converter can't do the cleaning job alone, the PureFire also slashed emissions by changing and better controlling the air-fuel transfer from the crankcase to the combustion chamber, reducing the loss of unburned fuel.
RedMax and Tanaka are smaller players in the handheld market, but the introduction of their two-strokes in 1998 came at a critical juncture. California was mulling a one-year delay in the implementation of its Tier II regulations, from 1999 to 2000, and the EPA had just published its proposed Phase II standards. At an exhaustive, ten-hour CARB board meeting in Sacramento in March 1998, the companies that had met the deadline (Tanaka, RedMax, and Ryobi) pleaded with CARB not to delay implementation. PPEMA, the trade association, proposed a less stringent emission standard that called for about a 50% reduction from Tier I levels.
At the meeting, most PPEMA members complained once again that the standards were too onerous and not technologically feasible, especially for cost-sensitive consumer products. "I wouldn't call it a ban [on two-stroke engines], but it's making it necessary for us to go to some technologies that we feel we can't afford to put on these units," argued Echo's Larry Will. A catalytic converter won't work on an 80cc chainsaw, Stihl's Fred Whyte maintains to this day. "We'd set fire to forests." Jim White from McCulloch, the chainsaw maker that dominated the industry in the 1950s, told CARB that its proposed regulations would "take us out of the market." McCulloch in fact filed for bankruptcy in 1999 and was bought by a Taiwanese company.
Their arguments, and those of almost a dozen other engine and landscaping industry reps, fell on deaf ears. The CARB members had seen some compliant machines in action outside the hearing room before the meeting. "Industry, while always complaining about regulations, without exception finds the wherewithal to meet the standards," says Bill Becker, executive director of the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators.
The meeting ended with CARB sticking to the proposed new standard for Tier II but allowing a one-year delay. The new rules also require extensive testing, in which the engine makers have made significant investments. "The industry underestimated how problematic compliance was going to be," says Don Purcell, former president of PPEMA, which disbanded late last year amid disagreement on what stance to take with regulators. Most of its members joined the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute, an organization whose members include lawn-mower makers.
The engineering advances introduced by RedMax, Tanaka, and others helped persuade the feds to raise the ante quite a bit on their own proposed Phase II regulations. Originally the EPA sought a further 30% cut in the emission level remaining after Phase I's 32% reduction. Now it ordered a further cutback of 70%, to be phased in from 2002 to 2005, which will leave engines running 80% cleaner than before Phase I. It's rare for the EPA to be as tough on emissions as California. No company had more to do with its decision than Deere & Co., which had previously opposed the California standards.
The $13-billion-a-year farm machinery giant had come up with a low-emission technology for its Homelite line of two-stroke consumer handheld products, which it had purchased only a few years before. The design, called compression wave, is similar to RedMax's stratified design. What was not similar was the full-court press that Deere's lobbyists put on the EPA to persuade the agency to stick with the more stringent Phase II standards, despite the howling protests of PPEMA. Deere's efforts paid off, as the EPA adopted the tougher standards in July 1999.
But what happened next was bizarre. Although Deere licensed the technology to Stihl, not a single product embodying it has ever reached the market. Last November, moreover, Deere sold the Homelite division to TechTronics Industries (TTI) of Hong Kong. Under a squeeze from big-box retailers, Homelite had lost $100 million in 21 months. Deere has few friends in the handheld industry today. "What's fascinating is that Deere persuaded the EPA, and then the industry gets screwed," says an industry source closely involved with the EPA. Deere won't comment, but in fairness it must be said that its intense lobbying efforts may have incited fresh waves of innovation among the handheld manufacturers.
Those waves are starting to crash ashore on the market. Stihl, Shindaiwa, Echo, and others have new designs slated for release this year that meet not only current emission standards but also the EPA's 2005 mandate. The models are clever hybrids that meld the advantages of two-stroke and four-stroke designs. Shindaiwa, for example, spent upwards of $10 million developing its T2500 trimmer, which it has just begun shipping to distributors. It features Shindaiwa's new C4 technology (compression-charged clean combustion), which eliminates the need for an oil reservoir or a catalytic converter, runs on the same fuel-oil mix as a two-stroke but has four-stroke components such as overhead valves.
Stihl's 4-MIX, developed at a cost of $12 million, is another hybrid that acts like a four-stroke but is lubricated like a two- stroke, and it has only three ounces of additional parts. The company plans to ship 4-MIX trimmers to California this summer, with a national rollout slated for later this year. Echo is more coy about its plans but says it will have a product out this summer that improves fuel delivery and combustion within a two-cycle framework. Echo does admit that because of the regulations, 84% of the nearly 200 products it sells this year will have new engines. "I'm losing my hair, and I've gained 35 pounds in the past five years," says Steve Bly, Echo's vice president of manufacturing.
Other engine makers, like Briggs & Stratton, know a market opportunity when they see it. The company has developed its first four-stroke engine suitable for handhelds, which it is al- ready selling to Electrolux. And RedMax is hard at work on its second-generation stratified design, slated for introduction this fall. The engineers had better stay busy, because next on the EPA's regulatory agenda is permeation, or emission of vapors from the fuel tanks of handhelds. Challenge, response: History never ends. |
