Congress returned from its August recess with at least two Senate bills with aftermarket components awaiting further action. One of those bills deals with highway transportation, the other with energy.
In each case the aftermarket-impact provisions are a small part of each big bill. That said, the two sections in either bill have some parallel provisions, primarily in the area of the hot topic of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications.
But V2V communication policy will be coming to the fore in Washington regardless of whether either of the two Senate bills pass Congress. That’s because the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced in May that it was moving up the timetable for issuance of its awaited proposed rule on V2V. That proposed rule, once finalized, will dictate when OEMs will have to include what V2V equipment in new cars.
NHTSA will finish its work before the end of the year, and send it on to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for approval. The OMB is notorious for taking its time. But one aftermarket executive who does not wish to be identified notes that Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind "are pretty motivated" to get the proposed rule on the street since they may not be around come January 2017 when President Obama leaves office. Getting a V2V rule finalized is important to both their legacies.
Rosekind gave a speech on July 21 in which he said, "...moving up our timetable is an unmistakable statement of our commitment to V2V." The agency released an advance notice of proposed rulemaking in August 2014 taking a first step on the road to a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS), No. 150, which would create minimum performance requirements for V2V devices and messages.
There are a number of companies already making and selling aftermarket V2V products. Aftermarket penetration will be important as a way of rapidly expanding the base of technology, as OEMs bring their products to market, so that credible research can be done as to costs and benefits of the technology.
"To assure the successful roll-out of V2V in the field, the V2V systems provided by OEMs and aftermarket manufacturers must be compatible, secure and provide the necessary basic information," says Brian Latouf, director, global vehicle safety, General Motors.
The House also is anxious to put its imprint on any NHTSA rulemaking. The House Energy & Commerce Committee has held a number of hearings on the topic. Rep. Michael Burgess, chairman of the committee's Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, says his subcommittee is focusing on what NHTSA needs to do to bring the technology safely into the marketplace. "We must make sure the technology is ready and the implementation is done right," he states.
But as Congress returns to Washington this month, all the legislative action has been in the Senate, not the House. Hence the inclusion of Sen. Gary Peters' (D-MI) Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Safety Technology Investment Flexibility Act of 2015 in the six-year highway funding bill the Senate passed at the end of July. However, the House has not produced a similar long-term bill. So the fate of the Peters' bill is up for grabs, though Senate passage is certainly an indication of its bi-partisan acceptability.
Peters’ V2V provision authorizes states to use existing surface transportation funding from highway programs, including the National Highway Performance Program (NHPP), the Surface Transportation Program (STP) and the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP), to invest in vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) technology.
The second bill the Senate passed also has Peters' fingerprints on it. The Senate Energy Committee passed the Energy Modernization Act, which includes, as an amendment, the Peters'-sponsored Vehicle Innovation Act. Like the Peters bill included in the highway bill, this second Peters bill also touches on V2V but has a much broader reach, reflected in its consolidation of the already-existing Department of Energy Vehicle Technologies Program, which promotes partnerships with public and private sector entities to conduct research and development to improve fuel efficiency in vehicles.
The focus of the program and of the Peters' bill is to reduce automotive use of petroleum via improved fuel efficiency. One use of program funds, specified in the Peters' bill, is "retrofitting advanced vehicle technologies to existing vehicles."
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