February 18, 2010 — HHO Tek just announced that they have begun official testing of an early 80’s model Jeep which is currently classified as a gross polluter. They have installed one of their Platinum Fuel Savers on the Jeep and the owner will drive it for one thousand miles in order to allow their product to fully condition the engine. Once the thousand miles are done, they will test the truck again at a Gold Shield California testing station and get conclusive results that the Platinum Fuel Saver will make a vehicle classified as a gross polluter pass and quite possibly exceed minimum standards. The owner of the Jeep is an off road enthusiast and one club he is a member of, requires California minimum standards be met, so until it is approved he cannot take this Jeep to their off road parks.
The Platinum Fuel Saver has been on the market for over 30 years but due to ineffective marketing exposure over the years, many people have never heard of it. HHO Tek took the product on about a year ago breathing new life into it with an effective global marketing campaign which has taken this product to an entirely new level. HHO Tek says that even though product support is growing rapidly in the US, over 80% of their business is international.
If you live in the State of California and your vehicle has been designated a “Gross Polluter” this can have a variety of consequences for you depending on what you depend on that vehicle to do for you. If it is strictly for recreation then it must be hauled to the point of use and back home. It is then an inconvenience. If it is your daily driver and you cannot afford a replacement. The consequences are infinitely worse. If it is in good tune, decent mechanical condition and just won’t pass the emissions test, we believe we can come to your rescue, in passing the emissions test, while giving you a guaranteed twenty two percent increase in mileage.
Is it likely something as simple as a $239 product which installs in minutes could solve the problem? According to HHO Tek, that is precisely what this testing procedure is going to prove. They also said that if for some reason it doesn’t make the car pass emissions testing and customer is not happy with a 22% increase in their fuel mileage, they will issue them a full refund.
HHOTek informed that they also have a new product which is going to completely change the way you look at an oil change, but that is all they would tell me for now.
Keep an eye out for this young company they are really making waves in the Go Green industry.
While researching gross polluters I ran across this article which tells the story of an individual from Vermont whose vehicle gets classified as a “gross polluter”. It is an amusing read which illustrates the problem quite well.
Confessions of a Gross Polluter
It was like learning I had bad breath. I had expected that registering my car in California would take about an hour. Wrong. It took about that much time to fill out the paperwork, write a check, take a number, and wait in line in the Division of Motor Vehicles.
I wasn’t in Vermont any longer, where the mountains are green and the cars are free to be you-and-polluting-me. Alas, I get ahead of myself and ahead of my 1999 Toyota Rav4’s collision with the “smog” test.
A friendly Department of Motor Vehicles employee suggested that I drive down the street to a certified shop. The serviceman greeted me and took my car into his garage.
After a half hour he came out of the bay, looked gravely at me, and said, “This is bad, very, very bad. You are a gross polluter.”
Like an owner pointing a puppy’s nose into an accident on the living room rug, he waived the detailed report in front of me, with those dreaded words in all caps. GROSS POLLUTER.
“You need to take care of this immediately. It may not be fixable,” he said sternly.
This being California, I expected that the mechanic would have asked how I felt about it, but no, he was perfunctory and sent me away, after charging me $70.
My hopes of living a carbon-neutral life were dashed. Forget my conversation driving across North Dakota when I suggested to my partner that we avoid purchasing bottled water in favor of filtering our own from the tap. Forget my plans for aggressive recycling and erase my years of composting… I’m a carbon-monoxide-spewing machine; I visualized the trail of grimy haze I left across the country, as I drove from Vermont to California.
I imagined what my former colleagues at Vermont Law School, a leading environmental law school, would think. Did they notice when I parked next to them in the parking lot weeks earlier? Would they cluck over a cup of shared green tea, “Yes, she was a gross polluter waiting to happen. It was only a matter of time.”
Seeking sympathy, I called my mother. She pointed out, “Wow, Vermont must have been really happy to see you go.” No purchase there.
I drove and saw a dented van from the 1970s emitting gray plumes of smoke with current registration tags. I wondered, how could this car have passed an emission test, when mine did not?
Then I learned about the loopholes. My California friends filled me in. One, tired of paying reams of exhaust repair bills, purchased an older-model VW Bus, filled with memories of the early 1970s and a favored polluter status-consider it a grandfather clause for grime. He eventually drove his toxic machine back to the east coast, where no DMV seems to notice.
I set out to find a mechanic to bring me back into the environmental fold. During a phone conversation, she said, “I’m not sure I can help you out. These things can be tricky.”
Two trips to the shop later, with new oxygen sensors and a catalytic converter, the old girl passed her “smog test.” I asked for a hard copy of the results to bring back to the DMV. She said, “Oh, they’ve already been forwarded by computer.”
Yikes! I’m in a database. DMV in California monitors its “GROSS POLLUTERS,” a black list for non-green Californians. I imagined the Division of Natural Resources arresting me as I walked out of Whole Foods with a bag of organic produce and hauling me away in a Prius with “Environmental Police” emblazoned on the side. Now I proudly held my new plates and thought, I will have CA plates on the back and front of my car. The air is cleaner and my wallet is $1,000 lighter.
