CVCC
The Dream: Blue Skies for Our Children
"Now, Honda has achieved, ahead of other companies, the technology level which enabled mass production of engines that are cleaner to the level of one-thousandth compared to the engines in use before the Clean Air Act."
--Hiroyuki Yoshino, Former President and CEO, Honda Motor Co., Ltd
It was the late 1960s, and air pollution was a growing problem in many parts of the world. When Congress passed the 1970 Clean Air Act amendment to help control smog, many automakers said that the stringent new regulatory requirements were too difficult. But one relative newcomer to the automotive industry rose to the challenge. Company founder Soichiro Honda believed that "dealing with the Clean Air Act wasn't a company issue but a duty to which the industry at large was obliged; a pledge to keep as a responsible member of society." And he challenged his engineers to meet the standard.
Responding to reports of pollution problems, Honda engineers had already begun focusing on the problem. Challenged to develop an engine that could reduce smog-forming emissions, the team of Honda engineers motivated themselves with the goal of creating "blues skies for our children." With this as their battle cry, the team created an entirely new type of engine technology -- the CVCC engine (Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion) -- that inspired the entire industry into action.
On October 11, 1972, the CVCC was introduced to the delight of journalists and world leaders. We sent three vehicles equipped with the CVCC engine to the EPA for testing, and they came back as the first vehicles to pass the stringent 1975 emissions requirements of the Clean Air Act - three full years before the government requirement took effect.
The CVCC heralded many significant advances. It was the first standard bearer of the lean-combustion concept - an engine that burns the air-fuel mixture more completely, reducing the amount of smog produced rather than treating the exhaust. In fact, the CVCC engine was the only engine that did not require a catalytic converter to meet the Clean Air Act requirements. The legacy of this lean burn technology lives on in our low emission vehicle technology. In the 1990s, Honda became the first automaker to meet a series of challenging regulatory requirements for cleaner emissions -- the LEV, ULEV, SULEV, and AT-PZEV standards*. It's just what Mr. Honda had in mind: cleaner engines and environmentally friendly technology.
Today, Honda engineers continue to pursue even cleaner technologies with the same inspiring dream: blue skies for our children.