Draft Amendment 3 to Global Technical Regulation (GTR) No. 4 concerning heavy-duty hybrids as approved by the Working Party on Pollution and Energy.

[Vote postponed until the March session. The GTR allows option between semi-validated HILS and fully validated power pack methods. US EPA believes there must be a robust understanding of the correlation between the two methods and the testing to build this understanding is incomplete. Therefore, while the US is committed to the GTR amendment, the US requests a delay. Canada and Japan support this request and need for the additional data.]

109. The representative of the United States of America kindly requested AC.3 to postpone consideration of draft Amendment 3 to UN GTR No. 4 (ECE/TRANS/WP.29/ 2014/84, ECE/TRANS/WP.29/2014/85 and the authorization to develop a corresponding amendment (ECE/TRANS/WP.29/AC.3/29)) because his country was still performing tests on the potential differences between the two alternatives in the proposed Annexes 9 and 10 and on their implications. He added that the test results would probably be shared with the other Contracting Parties at the January 2015 session of GRPE. The Chair noted that another Contracting Party also requested a delay in the vote until their clearance process had been completed. The Contracting Parties welcomed the statements and agreed to postpone consideration of the amendment and the vote by AC.3 to the March 2015 session.

22. The Chair of GRPE recalled the decision of WP.29 to defer the vote of the Executive Committee of the 1998 Agreement (AC.3) on ECE/TRANS/WP.29/2014/84 and ECE/TRANS/WP.29/2014/85 at its March 2015 session.

23. The expert from the USA presented GRPE-70-15 reporting on the activities of his Country on a correlation study comparing results obtained according to Annex 9 and those obtained according to Annex 10 (in ECE/TRANS/WP.29/2014/84). He offered to share the outcome of this study with GRPE in June 2015. GRPE welcomed this offer and agreed to further exchange information on the emissions of heavy duty vehicles equipped with hybrid powertrains and their environmental performance evaluation.

103. Submitted for consideration and vote, the proposal for Amendment 3 to draft UN GTR on Worldwide Heavy-Duty Certification procedure (WHDC) (ECE/TRANS/WP.29/2014/84, ECE/TRANS/WP.29/2014/85, ECE/TRANS/WP.29/AC.3/29, ECE/TRANS/WP.29/AC.3/38) was established in the UN Global Registry on 12 March 2015 by consensus vote of the following Contracting Parties present and voting: Australia, Canada, China, European Union (voting for Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom), India, Japan, Norway, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Russian Federation, South Africa and United States of America.

[GAR note pending publication of official session report: Amendment 3 (documents WP.29/2014/84 and WP.29/2014/85) is unanimously adopted by the Contracting Parties present, including EU, USA, Japan, China, and others. US EPA notes a number of open issues concerning discrepancies in results achieved during extensive testing which will need to be resolved in the next phase of development. Nonetheless, the US reaffirms their belief that the test methodology is essentially sound and votes to adopt the amendment.]