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As we move towards greener technologies in the transportation sector, it becomes mandatory to monitor its impact or the utilization of such a technology in the intended manner. Improper usage results in lesser utilization of benefits of such green technologies. One such scenario is the range anxiety; users of parallel hybrid vehicles face a dilemma between charging and refueling the vehicle. If the hybrid vehicle is operated in a gas-powered mode most of the time, the emission levels would be comparable to those of gas-powered vehicles. On the other hand, gas-powered vehicles have no mechanism to completely cut CO2 emissions, unlike hybrids (electric drive). Emission regulatory bodies are facing difficulties in regulating each road vehicle. Therefore, the actual emission levels emitted from the vehicles are higher than the estimate provided by regulations. This paper discusses the possibility of implementing a Carbon Credit Scoring for each class of vehicles.

Seatbelt retractors as important part of modern safety systems are mounted in any automotive vehicle. Their internal locking mechanism is based on mechanically sensing elements. When the vehicle is run over rough road tracks, the retractor oscillates by spatial mode shapes and its interior components are subjected to vibrations in all 6 degrees of freedoms (DOF). Functional backlash of sensing elements cause impacts with neighbouring parts and leads to weak, but persistent rattle sound, being often rated acoustically annoying in the vehicle. Current acoustic retractor bench tests use exclusively uni-directional excitations. Therefore, a silent 2 DOF test bench is developed to investigate the effect of multi-dimensional excitation on retractor acoustics, combining two slip-tables, each driven independently by a shaker. Tests on this prototype test bench show, that cross coupling between the two perpendicular directions is less than 1%, allowing to control both directions independently.