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In 2005, it was published a paper in Brazil reporting significant values of aldehydes emissions for some old Brazilian diesel SUVs (Sport Utility Vehicles). In 2008, PETROBRAS (Brazilian Oil Company) together with LACTEC (Institute of Technology for Development) decided to study methods for measuring aldehydes from diesel vehicles, including SUVs and heavy-duty engines. In 2008, National Environmental Council (CONAMA) published legislation 408/08, establishing that IBAMA (Brazilian National Environmental Institute) must provide a procedure for aldehyde measurement at the end of December 2010 and that engine manufacturers must report typical aldehyde emission values of diesel vehicles before the end of December 2012. A technical group was created in 2009 by the Brazilian Automotive Engineering Association (AEA) to discuss and elaborate a new method for aldehyde measurement in diesel vehicles and heavy-duty engines. The new procedure must be published before the end of 2010.

Due to worldwide concern regarding greenhouse gases emission, mainly CO₂, automakers are developing new technologies to reduce vehicles' fuel consumption. One of the most promising technologies, growing fast in USA, Japan and Europe is the Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs). In the Brazilian Market, HEVs availability is still absent, which causes uncertainties about possible impacts caused by the introduction of this new vehicle technology in the big cities. However, as requirements of non-pollutant technologies arise, HEVs are expected to be available in Brazilian Market in the next years. Within this scenario, in 2002, aiming to evaluate the adequacy of Brazilian Gasolines blended with up to 25% v/v of Ethanol in HEV technology, Petrobras Research and Development Center (CENPES) purchased from USA a 2002 Toyota Prius and a 2002 Honda Insight. Since then, both HEVs are being tested at CENPES's Vehicle Test Laboratory (LEV).

In the last years, world's general concern about climate changes and their effects on human life has strongly increased. Some countries, such as European Union members and the USA, are improving their legislations in order to limit vehicular CO2 emissions. To comply with these limits, new vehicle and fuel technologies are being developed in many places. Thus, the main goal of this paper is to present a comprehensive overview of some of these technologies for light-duty vehicles based on international published references and some experiences of Petrobras Research Center (CENPES). Also, this work addresses to some regulatory initiatives, such as new CO2 emission legislations and fuel economy labeling programs.

In the 80's, due to the oil crisis, natural gas (NG) began to be regarded as a fuel with great potential for replacing diesel in heavy duty vehicles. At that time, Petrobras, together with other companies, developed conversion kit technology for heavy duty diesel engines to run burning simultaneously diesel and NG, known as diesel gas. For several reasons, the trials were interrupted. In the late 90's and beginning of the 2000's, factors such as NG availability, expansion of NG distribution network; increase of NG converted light duty vehicle fleet, government interest in increasing NG's energy matrix share, all together made a scenario which stimulated new developments in diesel gas technology. The scenario changed in the last couple of years, with Brazilian NG demand reaching its offering, mainly due to thermoelectricity generation guarantee of supply. This makes the diesel gas technology more attractable than the NG dedicated technologies.

Hydrogen is considered one of the cleanest solutions for sustainable mobility. This paper presents an overview of some of these applications, such as internal combustion engines, fuel cell application and also blends of hydrogen and natural gas. This paper addresses questions regarding hydrogen properties such as net heating value, flame speed, power density, range of flammability and ignition energy. Also, the paper will draw a comparison between H2 and fossil and biofuels, such as ethanol. Questions regarding storage conditions, emissions levels, Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) air/fuel ratio among others are expected to be covered as well.

This paper presents a proposed methodology developed during a research project at CENPES - PETROBRAS Research Center, to simulate a typical urban traffic cycle in the city of São Paulo on a chassis dynamometer. This cycle can be used in pollutant gas emission tests for light duty vehicles in laboratories. The implementation of a representative city cycle in a laboratory allows its simulation under controlled conditions. It can be applied, for example, in emission inventories and the impact of air quality in public health studies, without the need for on-board emissions measurement equipment for field use. This kind of equipment is generally expensive and the repeatability for the same cycle can be difficult to achieve, mainly due to traffic variants such as the day of the week, time, and weather conditions.

Natural gas (NG) produced in the north of Brazil (Amazon Forest) has low methane and high nitrogen and therefore does not meet current NG specifications for vehicular use, as established by ANP (National Petroleum Agency). This paper reports the steps for NG conversion kit adjustments and also the results and comparisons of vehicle performance, emissions and fuel economy tests on a chassis dynamometer. The vehicles were tested with different fuels like regular NG, Amazon Forest NG, gasoline and ethanol. Also reported on this paper is an overview of the Brazilian NG fleet, present and future emission legislation, fuel specification, new trends on NGV (Natural Gas Vehicle) market and conversion kit technologies.