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As part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) continuing assessment of advanced light-duty (LD) automotive technologies to support the setting of appropriate national greenhouse gas (GHG) standards and to evaluate the impact of new technologies on in-use emissions, a 2016 Honda Civic with a 4-cylinder 1.5-liter L15B7 turbocharged engine and continuously variable transmission (CVT) was benchmarked. The test method involved installing the engine and its CVT in an engine-dynamometer test cell with the engine wiring harness tethered to its vehicle parked outside the test cell. Engine and transmission torque, fuel flow, key engine temperatures and pressures, and onboard diagnostics (OBD)/Controller Area Network (CAN) bus data were recorded.

Light-duty vehicle greenhouse gas (GHG) and fuel economy (FE) standards for MYs 2012-2025 are requiring vehicle powertrains to become much more efficient. One key technology strategy that vehicle manufacturers are using to help comply with GHG and FE standards is to replace naturally aspirated engines with smaller displacement “downsized” boosted engines. In order to understand and measure the effects of this technology, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) benchmarked a 2013 Ford Escape with an EcoBoost® 1.6L engine. This paper describes a “tethered” engine dyno benchmarking method used to develop a fuel efficiency map for the 1.6L EcoBoost® engine. The engine was mounted in a dyno test cell and tethered with a lengthened engine wire harness to a complete 2013 Ford Escape vehicle outside the test cell. This method allowed engine mapping with the stock ECU and calibrations.

In preparation for the midterm evaluation (MTE) of the 2022-2025 Light-Duty Greenhouse Gas (LD GHG) emissions standards, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is refining and revalidating their Advanced Light-Duty Powertrain and Hybrid Analysis (ALPHA) tool using newly acquired data from model year 2013-2015 engines and vehicles. ALPHA is a physics-based, forward-looking, full vehicle computer simulation capable of analyzing various vehicle types with different powertrain technologies, showing realistic vehicle behavior, and auditing of all internal energy flows in the model. As part of the validation of ALPHA, the EPA obtained model year 2014 Dodge Chargers equipped with 3.6 liter V6 engines and either a NAG1 five-speed automatic transmission or an 845RE eight-speed automatic transmission.