PALM SPRINGS, CA — Speaking at the WestStart-CALSTART Clean Heavy Duty Vehicles conference in California on March 4, a leading official from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that he was "very confident" that the truck and engine manufacturers will be able to produce viable products that will meet the stringent 2010 on-road heavy-duty vehicle emission standards. Chet France, director of the Assessment and Standards Division of the EPA, said that "based on a confidential survey, the manufacturers are pursuing a variety of approaches, including Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) and Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI). In terms of SCR, he said that the industry was moving forward with creative strategies to ensure the technology would be used and that urea could be available on a nationwide basis. While he said that final SCR strategies haven't been clearly established yet, the EPA had "fruitful dialogue with industry" and hasn't ruled out SCR as a possible solution. The trucking industry will be watching: when the 2003 standards were due to hit the market, there was a swell of pre-buying because of uncertainty about the reliability and fuel economy of the new engines.