99. The representative of the United States of America informed AC.3 that the first meeting of the informal working group on Quiet Road Transport Vehicles was planned for Washington, D.C. on 18-20 July 2012. He introduced ECE/TRANS/WP.29/2012/60 proposing the development of a UN GTR on this subject. AC.3 agreed to develop the UN GTR. The secretariat was requested to prepare a corresponding AC.3 document and to transmit it to GRB for consideration.

26. The expert from EC, secretary of the informal working group on Quiet Road Transport Vehicles (QRTV), reported on the outcome of the first meeting of the group held on 18-20 July 2012 in Washington D.C., United States of America (USA). He added that the next meeting of the group was planned for the beginning of December 2012. GRB noted that the publication of the New Proposal of Rule Making (NPRM) to which the development of the UN GTR on QRTV was linked, was not yet publicly available in the United States of America. Finally, the GRB Chair invited all experts to provide comments to the NPRM as soon as it was be published.

Mr. Ezana Wondimneh, the Chairman of the QRTV informal working group presented the final Terms of Reference for the group including the latest updates as agreed during 157th session of WP29 in June 2012. He also presented excerpts (GTRQRTV 01-07e) of discussions from the March and June sessions of WP.29 related to the development of the GTR for QRTV. The ToR contain provisions for a 2-step approach concerning the scope of vehicles that would 2 of 6 be covered by the GTR. In the initial step, the scope of the GTR will be restricted to EVs and HEVs; the second step will evaluate the need to add ICE vehicles. He particularly pointed to section II, paragraph 4 that explicitly defines the tasks of the working group. These tasks foresee a finalisation of the work by end of 2014, with intermediate status reports to be given to GRB and W.P29 at various stages of the development of the GTR. The GTR will take into account views and input from other WP.29 working groups, i.e. GRSP, GRRF and GRSG because the GTR will need to consider acoustic as well as safety policy issues.

The distribution of documents to participants of the IWG meetings was discussed. The group agreed that documents will be actively distributed by email to the core participants (still to be identified) only. Non-core participants would be able to access these documents at their discretion from the UNECE website, which will be kept up to date. These measures were decided to avoid the unnecessary mailings to a “mass list” of persons that may only occasionally attend the meetings. In addition to the core and non-core groups of participants, acoustics experts and other relevant guests may be invited to individual sessions as necessary.