Notice of Technical Workshop and Demonstrations for Vehicle Classification Test Procedure

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>National Highway Traffic Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. NHTSA-2024-0050]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Notice of Technical Workshop and Demonstrations for Vehicle Classification Test Procedure</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of technical workshop and demonstration and request for comments (RFC). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NHTSA seeks public comment on draft test procedure (TP) number TP-523-00, which is intended to assess vehicles for compliance with certain off-road capabilities requirements for vehicle classification within the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) program. This TP is prepared for the limited purpose of use by contracted independent laboratories conducting tests for NHTSA. The TP presents guidelines for a uniform testing and data recording format. TPs are not rules, regulations, or agency interpretations. NHTSA will host a demonstration of TP-523-00 to show how NHTSA intends to test vehicles to determine compliance with its regulations on vehicle classification. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> A technical workshop (presentation) and public demonstration for the test procedure will be held on January 15, 2025, and are expected to begin at 8 a.m. The date, location, and agenda are subject to change, and all registered attendees will be notified of any changes. Comments regarding the TP, the workshop, or the demonstration must be received no later than November 30, 2024 in order to be addressed during the event. The agency may address any comments received during the event regarding the TP, the workshop, and the demonstration, but comments should also be submitted to the docket for formal record per the “Comment” instructions indicated below. Comments submitted to the docket after November 30, 2024 will continue to be received and considered through February 15, 2025 to facilitate the final draft release of the TP. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">Workshop and Demonstration Location:</E> The workshop and demonstration will be held at the McNeese Convention Center in San Angelo, Texas. Directions to the meeting location and final agenda will be sent to registered participants as well as posted on the NHTSA Public Information Center (PIC) at <E T="03">https://www.nhtsa.gov/corporate-average-fuel-economy/cafe-public-information-center.</E> <E T="03">Documents for Comment:</E> NHTSA's Office of Vehicle Safety Compliance (OVSC) laboratory test procedure TP-523-00, described in this RFC, is available for viewing in PDF format in this Docket, as identified in the heading of this document. <E T="03">Comments:</E> You may submit comments to the Docket, identified as the docket number in the head of this document, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal rulemaking Portal:</E> To submit comments electronically, go to the U.S. Government regulations website at <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> Written comments may be faxed to 202-493-2251. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Send comments to: Docket Management Facility, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590-0001. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery:</E> If you submit written comments by hand or courier, please do so at 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. To be sure someone is there to help you, please call 202-366-9826 before coming. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> For detailed instructions on submitting comments and additional information, see the Public Participation section of this document, which can be found below. Note that all comments received will be posted to <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. <E T="03">Privacy Act:</E> Anyone is able to search the electronic form of all comments received into any of our dockets by the name of the individual submitting the comment (or signing the comment, if submitted on behalf of an association, business, labor union, etc.). You may review DOT's complete Privacy Act Statement in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> published on April 11, 2000 (65 FR 19477-78) or you may visit <E T="03">https://www.transportation.gov/privacy.</E> If you wish to provide comments containing proprietary or confidential information, please follow the instructions in the section of this notice titled “ <E T="03">How do I submit confidential business information?”</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> <E T="03">To register for event attendance:</E> Please contact Ms. Tuwana Taft, Office of Vehicle Safety Compliance, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590. Telephone: (202) 366-1008. Email: <E T="03">tuwana.taft@dot.gov.</E> Participants must register in order for NHTSA to determine an approximate head count and in order for NHTSA to deliver site details and a final agenda to all participants. Attendance will not be permitted without prior registration. <E T="03">For technical issues:</E> Mr. Michael Brace, Compliance Engineer, Office of Vehicle Safety Compliance, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1200 New Jersey Ave. SE, Washington, DC 20590. Telephone: 313-218-2265. Email: <E T="03">michael.brace@dot.gov.</E> <E T="03">For legal issues:</E> Mr. Paul Connet, Attorney-Advisor, Office of the Chief Counsel, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590. Telephone: 202-366-5547. Email: <E T="03">paul.connet@dot.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> On May 2, 2022, NHTSA published a final rule which stated the agency's intention to use a new test procedure to validate non-passenger automobile (“light truck”) classification data provided by manufacturers in their pre-model reports submitted under 49 CFR part 537. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> NHTSA is providing a draft version of TP-523-00 for comment. TP-523-00 is intended to improve NHTSA's ability to verify light truck compliance with 49 CFR 523.5(b)(2)(i) through (v) by providing guidelines for a uniform testing and information recording format for contracting laboratories who perform testing for NHTSA. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  87 FR 26025. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Introduction</HD> To investigate whether specific vehicles or products comply with Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations, NHTSA's Office of Vehicle Safety Compliance (OVSC) contracts with labs to conduct compliance testing. The OVSC laboratory test procedures are prepared for the limited purpose of use by contracted independent laboratories conducting compliance tests for the OVSC. OVSC laboratory test procedures are not rules, regulations, or NHTSA interpretations, and OVSC laboratory test procedures are not intended to limit the requirements of the applicable regulations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> NHTSA administers the CAFE program under authority granted in the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) of 1975, as amended by the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Per Congress, light-duty vehicles into two basic classes for CAFE compliance purposes: passenger automobiles (“passenger cars”) and non-passenger automobiles (“light trucks”). <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The statutory definitions for these classes indicate that “passenger automobiles” do <E T="03">not</E> include vehicles that “the Secretary decides by regulation . . . has a significant feature (except for 4-wheel drive) designed for off-highway operation, and . . . is a 4-wheel drive automobile or rated at more than 6,000 pounds gross vehicle weight.”  <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> Because passenger automobiles do not include these vehicles, these vehicles must therefore belong to the non-passenger automobile (light truck) category. Note that Congress expressly directed DOT (by delegation, NHTSA) to determine what a “significant feature (except for 4-wheel drive) designed for off-highway operation” would include. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  NHTSA's authority is codified at 49 U.S.C. 32901 <E T="03">et seq.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  49 U.S.C. 32901, 32902. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  49 U.S.C. 32901. </FTNT> To implement this Congressional directive to determine significant features designed for off-highway operation, NHTSA promulgated 49 CFR 523. Part 523 defines five different attributes of off-highway operation: “approach angle,”  <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> “breakover angle,”  <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> “departure angle,”  and “front and rear axle clearance.”  <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> Section 523.5(b) describes how a vehicle may qualify as a non-passenger automobile (light truck) through off-highway operation capabilities. Specifically, NHTSA defined measurement criteria for each of the five attributes of off-highway operation, <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> and a vehicle must meet the measurements for at least four out of those five attributes to qualify as an “off-highway capable” light truck. <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">Approach angle</E> means the smallest angle, in a plane side view of an automobile, formed by the level surface on which the automobile is standing and a line tangent to the front tire static loaded radius arc and touching the underside of the automobile forward of the front tire. 49 CFR 523.2. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">Breakover angle</E> ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━