The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

Dec 09, 2022 (The Expresswire) -- Final Report will add the analysis of the impact of Russia-Ukraine War and COVID-19 on this industry.

"Artificial Intelligence in IoT Market" Insights 2022 - By Applications (Small and Medium Scale Business, Large Scale Busines), By Types (On-Premise, Cloud-based), By Segmentation analysis, Regions and Forecast to 2028. The Global Artificial Intelligence in IoT market Report provides In-depth analysis on the market status of the Artificial Intelligence in IoT Top manufacturers with best facts and figures, meaning, Definition, SWOT analysis, PESTAL analysis, expert opinions and the latest developments across the globe., the Artificial Intelligence in IoT Market Report contains Full TOC, Tables and Figures, and Chart with Key Analysis, Pre and Post COVID-19 Market Outbreak Impact Analysis and Situation by Regions.

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

The manufacturing sector has reached an inflection point in its digitization journey. The availability of high-powered mobile devices (smartphones, tablets and the like), the industrial internet of things (IIoT), massive data creation, artificial intelligence, cloud-based technologies and the drive for competitive advantage have sparked a transformation not seen since the advent of the assembly line. 

In many cases, what was once a discrete location with on-site workers has become a massively interconnected and scaled hybrid world of digital and remote systems and employees. Warehouses and factories have transformed into global networks of automated systems, enabling significant operational and workflow efficiencies. At the same time, the digitization of supply chains has accelerated already complex infrastructures and diversified workflows with more users, roles and third parties that need access to sensitive information and infrastructure.

Securing this type of environment without disrupting employee workflows and bringing productivity to a grinding halt is seemingly insurmountable. However, this level of complexity isn’t unlike that of another dynamic industry — one with hyper-strict regulations and complicated workflows. One where getting it wrong can have life-critical consequences: healthcare.

Much like manufacturing, the healthcare sector is rapidly advancing toward a digital future reliant on new technologies that provide fast access to systems, applications and data while also managing and mitigating security risks. While each industry has its own nuances and challenges, commonalities are evident in the high degree of IT complexity and rapidly changing access requirements that must remain compliant and secure. And of course, the impact of a cyberattack or data breach on either sector can be paralyzing, resulting in essential resource shortages and devastating human outcomes. 

Is There a New Security Perimeter?

The attack surface for most manufacturing organizations has grown exponentially, catalyzed by the rise of digital warehouses, mobile technology and IIoT, which make traditional perimeter security harder to enforce. This isn’t lost on cyber criminals, who continuously evolve their tactics to breach organizations from every angle. While traditional endpoint or “perimeter-based” security made sense when networks and users were located almost entirely on-premises, networks of today require IT and security teams to control access to applications and resources through the authenticated identity of an individual or device.

Commonly referred to as “identity security,” this approach is the foundation of zero trust, and focuses on the digital identity of the requestor to ensure that only the right users or devices are provided access to the data and resources they need. If identity validation fails, access is not permitted. Though the concept of zero trust isn’t new, the adoption of technologies necessary to facilitate a zero-trust architecture are evolving.

The Appeal of Healthcare and Manufacturing 

Both healthcare and manufacturing organizations hold extremely valuable and proprietary data, and operate within IT ecosystems that are among the most complex on earth.

For financially motivated attackers, hacking systems to sell personal health information on the black market can be highly lucrative. For others motivated by malice — like state-sponsored hacker groups — the potential human safety impact of compromising healthcare systems is highly appealing.

Similarly, attacks on manufacturing organizations are becoming more pervasive, given the power to impact global supply chains. Consider the U.S. infant formula shortage earlier this year , when safety concerns prompted an operational shutdown by one of three major formula producers and resulted in significant and persistent national disruption. Imagine the large-scale distress if a cyberattack were to simultaneously take out two or even three of these producers, affecting populations across countries, continents, or the world.

The pandemic also caused huge disruption throughout both sectors. In healthcare, the rapid transition to telehealth, coupled with an unimaginable influx of patients and new clinicians, resulted in the adoption of technologies that worked but created new access points for bad actors to breach. Likewise, manufacturing transitioned to remote working, embraced new risk-management tools and implemented advanced analytics. In both cases, accelerated digitization illuminated security gaps that continue to widen.

Using Digital Identity

In the spring of 2022, the Biden Administration addressed today’s evolving cyber threats by releasing a federal strategy to move U.S. government agencies to zero trust standards. The executive order was released during rising attacks from the Russia-Ukraine war, with the goal of improving security and reducing cyber threats across the public and private sectors at a critical time.

A zero trust architecture is designed to put logical barriers around applications, forcing users to be authenticated, authorized and continuously validated before being granted access to applications and data. This requires a comprehensive digital identity strategy that enables seamless and compliant user workflows — an approach that the highly regulated healthcare industry is widely adopting.

Manufacturers can take a page out of healthcare’s playbook by focusing on four processes and technologies that lay the groundwork for zero trust:

• Implement lifecycle provisioning and de-provisioning. It’s critical for all organizations to know who has access to what systems, and the degree to which an individual can access these systems under specific conditions. Similarly, ensuring you can automatically modify and revoke access as users change roles or leave the organization is crucial to letting the right people in and keeping the wrong people out. Identity-governance tools can deliver role-based access without manual intervention. 
• Create user checkpoints with multifactor authentication (MFA). Compromised user credentials are one of the most common initial attack vectors, so requiring two or more verification factors to gain access to network resources is of the utmost importance. MFA enables you to provide a secure, auditable chain of trust for remote network access, cloud applications, and other critical systems and workflows. Non-intrusive modalities such as biometrics and proximity-based authentication accomplish this without creating user barriers.
• Enable a passwordless experience. Enforcing complex passwords is a security best practice, but not entirely realistic when employees must enter them into multiple applications all day, every day. Single sign-on technology eliminates password fatigue and improves compliance by reducing the need to enter usernames and passwords to access on-premises and cloud applications, shared workstations and virtual desktops. 
• Practice the principle of least privilege. Make sure you’re not giving employees and third-party vendors more access than they need by providing just enough to complete their work, and nothing more. Privileged access management prevents overprivileged users through granular policy control at the system level. This is a corollary of step one above, and can be implemented effectively and with relatively low burden.

Today’s manufacturing organizations are increasingly complex. The key to success is ensuring that complexity doesn’t lead to elevated security risk. Implementing a digital identity architecture that enables a zero trust operational model, along with fast and efficient access for the right users, strikes the correct balance of access and security. Consider how healthcare has bolstered defenses and remained agile amid surging attacks. By drawing on insights and best practices from other sectors, manufacturers can make faster strides in advancing their cyber resiliency.

Gus Malezis is chief executive officer of Imprivata.

• Trevin Peterson found out about Amazon FBA in 2017. Six months later, he quit his job.
• Before that, he tried many different side hustles but was unsuccessful.
• He uses a software tool and his observational skills to determine which products to sell.

For as long as Trevin Peterson can remember, he has wanted to be an entrepreneur.

He has tried just about anything to build a business. When he was 12 years old, he made flyers and handed them out in his neighborhood, offering services like lawn mowing, poop cleaning, and garbage disposal for $5 to $20 per request, he told Insider. His early entrepreneurial attempt added about $40 a week to his pocket. 

College was another path he tried. He began in 2016 by attending Utah Valley University, where he received an associate's degree in arts but dropped out before receiving his bachelor's degree. He didn't feel like he was learning anything useful or new and so he felt that college wasn't worth the cost.

One assignment really hit home for him. It was a task to put together a business plan, which Peterson not only completed but executed online — an additional step that wasn't asked for. It was an ecommerce business on Shopify selling iPhone adapters and chargers, and it was his first introduction to selling things online. 

Peterson annoyingly received a "C" for the assignment. It also didn't escape him that his professor was formerly a business owner whose venture had failed. "And I was like, 'okay, well I can't really learn from somebody that's failed a business, this doesn't make any sense," Peterson said.

The ecommerce store wasn't wildly successful but he managed to sell about $500 worth of products, he said. 

He also learned a lesson: It's hard to get people to buy things online. 

Tried, tested, and failed attempts 

While in college, he tried a clothing popup shop where he bought wholesale clothes from a boutique, and then hosted events at his house to sell them. He used a $1,500 gift from his mother-in-law to purchase the initial inventory. It wasn't a complete failure: Peterson and his wife made a little bit of money but nothing significant enough to live off of, he said.

The couple then attempted to nail down brand deals by growing an Instagram page for their dog. The account reached about 12,000 followers when some deals began to trickle in from pet brands. However, it was mostly in the form of free products and, at times, a few hundred dollars a month, which also couldn't pay the bills. 

He also tried selling call-center software for six months but didn't make a single sale. 

"The best part is, I had no idea what I was selling. I was hired to just cold call, cold email, and I was basically an appointment setter," Peterson said of the experience. 

Instead of continuing to spend his time and money in college, in 2017, he decided to work for his dad who owned a construction company. His role was that of a superintendent project manager who oversaw subcontractors for various projects. It was a job he kept for over a year. In the interim, Peterson also tried additional side hustles like selling a sports app for a network marketing company, which didn't work out because the company went out of business. 

Finding fulfillment in Amazon

In November 2017, Peterson heard about Fulfillment by Amazon from a seller friend. He didn't know that anyone could sell on Amazon and became interested in the idea. So Peterson began doing his research and within a few weeks, he was ready to launch his first product: A seatbelt gap filler. It was an item that was placed between the center console and the seat to prevent things from falling. The initial idea came from a company that was featured on Shark Tank, but he didn't know that. 

He was able to find the product on Alibaba, the Chinese ecommerce company that provides wholesale products. He said he ordered 100 units of the gap filler for $400. To his surprise, the product did well and he sold 50 units within a few days — until he received a cease and desist letter from the patent holder of the product. 

"I didn't know I was infringing on anyone's patent, and so I basically closed down that product," Peterson said. 

He created a removal order so that Amazon's warehouse would dispose of the remainder of the units.   

He realized that the hardest part of the process was figuring out what to sell. So he began trying his luck with different products. Next, Peterson launched a car phone mount. He spent $500 on inventory and a few hundred dollars to advertise it and sold nothing. Altogether, he recalls losing about $900 on that idea. 

"I was like, 'oh, everyone loves this'. But little did I know, the competition on Amazon for this particular product was super, super high and I lost a bunch of money on that," Peterson said. 

The biggest lesson he learned from that experience was that you don't want to sell a product that has a lot of competition. This means other Amazon sellers have already amassed thousands of good reviews for the same product. 

The next product he tried was a fidget pen, which helps with ADHD. Again, it began to do well until Amazon banned selling the product without documents and approvals due to safety issues, he said. 

It wasn't until the sixth product that Peterson began to see real progress. By this time, he started to understand that there are key variables that make up a good product idea. 

"On Amazon, there are millions of shoppers, and the goal is to find a product that people are already searching for. And I didn't quite understand that concept," Peterson said of his first few attempts. 

Within six months of starting, or by May of 2018, he told Insider he was able to replace his income, which wasn't much money at the time. His 9-to-5 salary while working for his dad was about $36,000 a year. Peterson was 22 years old and his expenses were minimal. Rent living in Bluffdale, Utah was about $1,000 and he wasn't living any lavish lifestyle. Once he began to make about $2,500 in profit, he was comfortable enough to quit his job. 

"Looking back on it, it didn't feel real. What's crazy about Amazon is  I'm not doing the fulfillment. I'm just the middleman. Amazon is doing the fulfillment and all I see are numbers on the screen saying; 'Hey, I got X amount of orders'," Peterson said. "And I don't see the inventory being processed. I don't see the inventory being sent to the customer. So it didn't really feel real until I got a big fat deposit from Amazon. I was like, wait, this is real."

A few key lessons he learned included that the keywords related to a product that people are searching for should have a certain amount of search volume, and there are software tools that provide that data from Amazon. Peterson started by using Jungle Scout, a tool for search and market analytics. Today, he uses something similar called Helium 10, a Chrome extension that also shows him how much other sellers are making from that same product. 

With these tools, Peterson realized that the sweet spot was finding products with low competition but high demand. Finally, the few competitors already selling the product should have high profits. He's now selling keychains, small wallets, and party decorations because they're in that sweet spot. 

His first recommendation for anyone starting off is to look around at the products you already use on a regular basis. For example, he was driving around his neighborhood and saw a house with a big "happy birthday" sign in the yard. He thought to himself that might be a good product to consider selling. 

Once you have a few ideas of the products, you can do keyword searches to determine which ones fall within that sweet spot, he noted. 

Setting up the product 

In the beginning, Peterson spent more than 40 hours a week researching and setting up his products while he was working for his dad. Often, that meant he'd be on his computer after work from 6:00 p.m. until 2:00 a.m. on some days. This was also because the manufacturers were in different time zones. 

"The interesting thing with Amazon is it's definitely front-loaded. So the majority of the work is all upfront. You've obviously got to find a product, you've got to find a manufacturer, you've got to create your listing and take professional images," Peterson said. "There's a lot of work that goes into it upfront. But what's cool is once you have it set up, you basically just click a few buttons, you reach out to your manufacturer to reorder inventory, and your manufacturer actually sends it directly from their manufacturer to Amazon."

There are usually numerous manufacturers available on Alibaba for any given product. Peterson reaches out to as many as he can to request quotes, understand the materials they use, and what type of customizations they can do. He will often add his designs to certain products to make them unique. Once the product reaches an Amazon fulfillment center, it's ready to sell, he said. 

There are also costs associated with getting good photographs of the products. To keep costs down and make it simple, Peterson told Insider he uses a photographer in China. The manufacturer ships one unit to the photographer who will take five to seven images for $150, he said. 

When it comes to monthly expenses, Peterson spends a lot on Amazon fees and advertising.

Overall, his biggest expenses this year have been the cost of goods, which amounted to $237,025, followed by FBA Fees at $281,079, and advertising costs at $162,282. Amazon advertising is important because it allows customers to better find your product, he said. It's a pay-per-click model. And, the more clicks that result in a sale, the more his product gets boosted to the top of Amazon's search page.

This year through November, his revenue was about $961,000. From that, he has a take-home profit of about $282,000 before tax, according to a live video and screenshots of his payments dashboard, which tracks his sales. November has been his highest month this year, with over $107,000 in revenue. The last two months of the year tend to be his most profitable as people shop for the holidays, he said. 

He now also has an Amazon sellers consulting and education firm called AMZ Champions. He also shares free tips on his YouTube channel, Instagram, and TikTok where his largest following is at over 374,000.

For companies in the supply chain for consumer products sold in California, paying attention to the California law known as Proposition 65 is important. Private enforcement of the law is so widespread that many companies have been forced to learn about it. For those still unaware of the law and those aware but hoping they will not be targeted, taking proactive steps to address the law is likely the most economical path forward, both financially and in terms of company resource drain and stress.

Proposition 65 was adopted in California in 1986 through California’s ballot initiative process. Despite its age, it has not been duplicated in other states. The basic structure of its product warning provisions is: no company shall “knowingly and intentionally” supply to Californians any consumer product that could expose them to a listed carcinogen or reproductive toxin, without providing clear and reasonable warning. This prohibition/requirement applies to all companies in the supply chain for products sold in California, regardless of physical presence in California. Manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and other supply chain entities all may be subject to liability. Even entities with fewer than 10 employees often are swept up in enforcement actions, despite a carve-out for them, as a result of contractual commitments made (often unwittingly) with other suppliers.

The California agency that administers Proposition 65 maintains a list of known carcinogens and reproductive toxins. There are currently approximately 1,000 chemicals on the list, and California continues to add new chemicals

Proposition 65 authorizes penalties of up to $2,500 per day per violation. Non-governmental plaintiffs (ranging from environmental public interest organizations to individuals) can enforce the law, obtaining contractual commitments from defendants to come into compliance with the law, and can recover their attorney’s fees and a percentage of the penalties imposed. This structure has led to the development of an aggressive Proposition 65 plaintiffs’ bar. Private plaintiffs and firms have polished their practices to the point of being able to extract nuisance-value settlements very efficiently. As a result of the internet warnings requirement of the law, plaintiffs can manage an enforcement practice without ever visiting a defendant’s location.

As of this writing, the California Attorney General’s office reports 484 out-of-court settlements in 2022, and 110 consent judgments (settlements reached after the filing of a Proposition 65 lawsuit). Many of these settlements involved entire supply chains. A representative example of such a settlement might consist of the marketer, distributor and retailer of a sporting good, all operating in different states. Proposition 65 settlement agreements are publicly available here. That webpage lists defendants of all sizes and levels of sophistication.

Companies faced with private enforcement actions very often respond by settling and agreeing to treat their products as though they require a warning, even if it’s less than clear that the law requires a warning. This essentially sets up two possible paths for companies that have not yet evaluated Proposition 65 or been the target of enforcement—evaluate Prop. 65 proactively, on your own terms, with the aim of preventing an enforcement case; or wait until an enforcement case, and then urgently implement a warning program under the scrutiny of a California private enforcer (whose attorney’s fees you’ll likely pay). Proactive compliance is normally more economical than forced compliance. This holds true across a massive variety of consumer products sectors, whether that be food products, apparel, electronics, cosmetics or any number of other sectors.

Finally, a fairly typical example, drawn from the above-linked settlements page: Early in 2022, a food ingredients manufacturer located in the Midwest received notice from a private Proposition 65 plaintiffs’ attorney that a certain flour it manufactures contains lead at levels requiring a warning. By June, this company had settled out-of-court, agreeing to either reformulate the flour product or provide warnings, and agreeing to a civil penalty of approximately $5,000 and attorney’s fees of approximately $50,000. The number of settlements finalized in 2022 following this general pattern will likely near 1,000.

The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment’s (OEHHA) primary Prop. 65 webpage is a useful starting place for those looking to learn about this law.

Paul Jacobson is an associate at Spencer Fane, helping businesses manage their environmental and workplace safety challenges.

The latest study released on the Global Cloud Machine Learning Market by AMA Research evaluates market size, trend, and forecast to 2027. The Cloud Machine Learning market study covers significant research data and proofs to be a handy resource document for managers, analysts, industry experts and other key people to have ready-to-access and self-analyzed study to help understand market trends, growth drivers, opportunities and upcoming challenges and about the competitors.

Key Players in This Report Include:

Oracle Corporation (United States), Google Inc. (United States), International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) (United States), Alibaba Group (China), Microsoft Corporation (United States), Amazon Web Services (United States), Fair, Isaac, and Company (FICO) (United States), Tencent Cloud (China), SAP SE (Germany), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (United States)

Download trial Report PDF (Including Full TOC, Table & Figures) @ https://www.advancemarketanalytics.com/sample-report/93764-global-cloud-machine-learning-market#utm_source=DigitaljournalShubhangi

Definition:

Cloud Machine Learning helps data scientists and developers build Machine learning models that offer training and prediction Services. The availability of a large amount of data, increasing the need for efficient operations and Boost revenue is growing this market. Lack of skilled consultants and increasing data security can slow the growth of this market.

Market Trend:

• Introduction of Robotic Process Automation

Market Drivers:

• Increasing Need for Efficient Operations, Better Customer Service and Growing Sales Revenue
• Availability of a Large Amount of Data

Market Opportunities:

• Advancement in Cloud-Based Machine Learning Technology
• Increasing Investment in Healthcare Industry

The Global Cloud Machine Learning Market segments and Market Data Break Down are illuminated below:

by Type (Private clouds, Public clouds, Hybrid cloud, Others), Application (Personal, Business), End User (BFSI, Retail, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Government, Others), Solution (Software, Services)

Global Cloud Machine Learning market report highlights information regarding the current and future industry trends, growth patterns, as well as it offers business strategies to help the stakeholders in making sound decisions that may help to ensure the profit trajectory over the forecast years.

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Geographically, the detailed analysis of consumption, revenue, market share, and growth rate of the following regions:

• The Middle East and Africa (South Africa, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, Egypt, etc.)
• North America (United States, Mexico & Canada)
• South America (Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, etc.)
• Europe (Turkey, Spain, Turkey, Netherlands Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Russia UK, Italy, France, etc.)
• Asia-Pacific (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam, China, Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, Korea, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and Australia).

Objectives of the Report

• -To carefully analyze and forecast the size of the Cloud Machine Learning market by value and volume.
• -To estimate the market shares of major segments of the Cloud Machine Learning
• -To showcase the development of the Cloud Machine Learning market in different parts of the world.
• -To analyze and study micro-markets in terms of their contributions to the Cloud Machine Learning market, their prospects, and individual growth trends.
• -To offer precise and useful details about factors affecting the growth of the Cloud Machine Learning
• -To provide a meticulous assessment of crucial business strategies used by leading companies operating in the Cloud Machine Learning market, which include research and development, collaborations, agreements, partnerships, acquisitions, mergers, new developments, and product launches.

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Major highlights from Table of Contents:

Cloud Machine Learning Market Study Coverage:

• It includes major manufacturers, emerging player’s growth story, and major business segments of Cloud Machine Learning market, years considered, and research objectives. Additionally, segmentation on the basis of the type of product, application, and technology.
• Cloud Machine Learning Market Executive Summary: It gives a summary of overall studies, growth rate, available market, competitive landscape, market drivers, trends, and issues, and macroscopic indicators.
• Cloud Machine Learning Market Production by Region Cloud Machine Learning Market Profile of Manufacturers-players are studied on the basis of SWOT, their products, production, value, financials, and other vital factors.
• Key Points Covered in Cloud Machine Learning Market Report:
• Cloud Machine Learning Overview, Definition and Classification Market drivers and barriers
• Cloud Machine Learning Market Competition by Manufacturers
• Impact Analysis of COVID-19 on Cloud Machine Learning Market
• Cloud Machine Learning Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2021-2027)
• Cloud Machine Learning Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2021-2027)
• Cloud Machine Learning Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type {Payment Gateway, Merchant Account, Subscription Management,}
• Cloud Machine Learning Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis Cloud Machine Learning Manufacturing Cost Analysis, Industrial/Supply Chain Analysis, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers, Marketing
• Strategy by Key Manufacturers/Players, Connected Distributors/Traders Standardization, Regulatory and collaborative initiatives, Industry road map and value chain Market Effect Factors Analysis.

Browse Complete Summary and Table of Content @ https://www.advancemarketanalytics.com/reports/93764-global-cloud-machine-learning-market#utm_source=DigitaljournalShubhangi

Key questions answered

• How feasible is Cloud Machine Learning market for long-term investment?
• What are influencing factors driving the demand for Cloud Machine Learning near future?
• What is the impact analysis of various factors in the Global Cloud Machine Learning market growth?
• What are the accurate trends in the regional market and how successful they are?

Thanks for studying this article; you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Middle East, Africa, Europe or LATAM, Southeast Asia.

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Parts suppliers, race shops and tuners alike have all found themselves in the crosshairs of an increasingly strict EPA thanks to the latest round of National Compliance Initiatives, which specifically target the reduction of emissions coming from modified exhaust systems. This focus from the EPA has seen aftermarket companies hit with millions in fines, as well as criminal punishment in certain cases. For decades, the EPA allowed aftermarket companies to operate in this way, but things have changed. We sat down with aftermarket experts and the EPA itself to learn where the rising tensions are stemming from. Spoiler alert: it all ties back to diesel tuners.

Our story starts more than 20 years ago, with two landmark actions clamping down on diesels. First, in 1998, the EPA reached a settlement with seven diesel engine manufacturers for the role they played in installing tampered emissions computers onto their powertrain systems. These defeat devices allowed the owners to knowingly produce more emissions than the EPA deemed legal at the time. Companies including Caterpillar, Cummins, Detroit Diesel, Mack Trucks, Navistar, Renault and Volvo together had to spend more than $1 billion to rectify the cheating engines. This was “the largest civil penalty ever for violation of environmental law,” as the EPA proudly announced.

Not long afterwards in 2000, the Clinton administration and the EPA issued an updated set of rules related to diesel vehicle emissions. These changes came as the United States moved to adopt ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel, which allowed OEMs to begin installing higher-efficiency catalytic converters and other emissions-control devices like urea injection systems. These tools for reducing the harmful chemical emissions from a diesel engine were previously incompatible with traditional diesel fuel. According to the EPA, this set of regulations was intended to help shift towards a uniform regulatory outlook for both diesel vehicles and their fuel source. This set of rules was rolled out gradually between the 2004 and 2010 model years.

In defiance of these new diesel regulations, a duplicitous market emerged in support of diesel vehicle owners. An entire industry was created in service of removing or modifying these new emissions systems from all sorts of modern diesel vehicles.

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There are many reasons why a diesel truck owner might want to remove these systems, though they largely fall into three major categories. Removing emissions systems from a modern diesel often increases horsepower, improves fuel economy, and cuts down on damaging carbon deposits commonly associated with DEF usage. As is clearly outlined in the Clean Air Act however, no person or company may modify the factory-installed emissions system on any vehicle born with a recognized VIN tag. There are specific exceptions in the CAA that pertain to competition vehicles such as dedicated race cars or something like a UTV. The thing about race cars and UTVs is that they are clearly exempt from road-going rules; you only see them on race tracks and off-road. By contrast, a cheating diesel is very visible. It is a big truck going down the highway or back road rolling coal. It’s hard to miss.

"As diesel truck and engine original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) introduced emissions controls to comply with new diesel standards phased in between model years 2004 and 2010, EPA became aware of a growing supply of aftermarket devices designed to remove or defeat those emission controls,” an EPA spokesperson told R&T, perhaps downplaying the viral visibility of rolling coal in the Aughts. “Many devices were, and continue to be, openly advertised as defeating emission controls and sold indiscriminately to the public at large through wholesale or internet-based retail businesses."

This is no small trend. The EPA estimates that well over 1 million defeat devices have been sold, and that more than half a million diesel trucks have removed their emissions controls. “It is difficult to precisely quantify the prevalence of aftermarket defeat devices because the only available data is what EPA gathers through individual investigations,” an EPA spokesperson told R&T. “Recent enforcement cases have addressed well over 1 million illegal aftermarket defeat devices. From 2010 through 2019, based solely on the EPA’s civil enforcement investigations involving aftermarket defeat devices for diesel pickup trucks, EPA estimates that the emissions controls have been removed from more than 550,000 diesel pickup trucks. As a result of this tampering, more than 570,000 tons of excess NOx and 5,000 tons of particulate matter will be emitted by these tampered trucks over their lifetimes.”

Taylor Smith of Sinister Diesel told R&T during a chat at the 2022 SEMA Show that the actions of the diesel community during that aforementioned time period did little to assuage the EPA’s concerns.

“I think around that same time is when social media really blew up, and we started to see videos of diesel trucks rolling coal down the interstate,” Smith told R&T. “I think the diesel community kind of did it to themselves. You can’t post a video like that and ultimately be surprised that they’re coming after us now.”

The particulate matter that makes up the black smoke you often see belching out of a modified diesel is particularly nasty stuff. The compounds in the soot have been linked to increased risk of lung cancer and respiratory disease, as have other present chemical compounds such as benzene, formaldehyde, and 1,3-butadiene. Not what you want to be breathing in.

“Due to their severe excess NOx emissions, illegally tampered trucks have an air quality impact equivalent to adding more than 9 million additional compliant, non-tampered diesel pickup trucks to our roads,” the EPA told R&T. “Again, this is solely based on what EPA has identified during its investigations regarding tampered diesel pickup trucks. It is likely that the problem is much bigger than that.”

Chris Casperson of Pypes Performance Exhaust had a robust tuning business supplying mostly a market of muscle cars, new and vintage. Across its social media pages you will find not lifted Cummins trucks but lowered Mustangs, restored Chevy Novas, and spotless Oldsmobile Cutlasses. In 2017, he received a message about his products from a source he'd never heard from before: the EPA. Pypes didn't work specifically to defeat emissions devices in the same way the diesel tuners did, but his exhausts and the handheld tuners he sold were nonetheless non-compliant. While a non-diesel tuner car might not be as visible as a Ram rolling coal in your face, the tech at hand is the same in the eyes of the EPA; both tweak the vehicle’s ECU and emissions. As Casperson discovered, any sort of tampering with a vehicle’s ECU or emissions system can land your shop in a load of trouble under these NCIs, whether or not you work on diesels alone. Pypes Performance Exhaust was fined $84,000 for their role in selling non-emission-compliant exhaust systems after an investigation was opened for the sale of H&S Performance handheld tuners. Those H&S Performance tuners can be used to adjust emissions controls on diesel engines and that was enough reason for the EPA to come knocking.

“My feeling is that when H&S Performance finally had to come clean and deliver all of their data away, we were on that list,” Chris Casperson of Pypes Performance Exhaust told R&T. “By the time the EPA had gone through that list we had stopped selling the parts for around three years. We got the letter in 2017, and I believe we had officially stopped selling them in 2014. That being said, the EPA isn’t going to look at that list and just ask about diesel stuff. They're going to look at your whole website. We thought we were fine. We had a lot of what we would call off-road racing parts, off-road x-pipes and things that are not legal for street use. That was kind of the second phase of what they wanted us to show. They wanted to go after and start taking that stuff because they knew that the term off-road use was being abused. We had to revamp our whole line and get rid of anything that was off-road use only.”

H&S Performance was fined $1 million in 2015 for the sale of 114,436 defeat devices intended for use in diesel trucks. As part of that settlement, the entire supply of H&S Performance parts were to be removed from the marketplace. Companies like Pypes Performance Exhaust who previously sold those H&S parts quickly found themselves under the scope of the EPA as well.

Keith Tanner of Flyin Miata also believes that the handheld tuners became a target for the EPA due to the ease in which they can be used to skirt EPA regulations with or without diesel trucks being involved.

"The tuners are a very easy way to do it, because you literally just plug it into your OBD 2 port and tell it to upload a program and all of the sudden you can roll coal,” Tanner told R&T. “That’s why tuners got the initial attention, and that’s why there was a flurry of lawsuits against the diesel tuner guys like Bully Dog. They were clearly removing EGR systems, they were changing the tune to increase particulates dramatically, and they were having very visible effects. They were pissing off other road users with it. So they were the first to get hit, but in reality there is no difference between a diesel truck and sports car. From a legislative standpoint, they’d both be considered the same thing. So once the EPA had to start paying attention to what people were doing as far as impacting emissions systems, that basically brought in everybody who was messing with emissions systems. So if you were putting an ECU on a Mazda Miata so you could run a turbocharger, that’s not really fundamentally any different than removing the EGR system on a diesel pickup truck. From a legal standpoint it is the same thing."

The visibility and environmental impact of modified diesel trucks have made it significantly more difficult for the EPA to turn its head the other way as far as hopped-up gasoline vehicles are concerned. Tanner explained that the EPA simply can’t leave the aftermarket with any gray area as far as emissions are concerned, resulting in widespread enforcement across both diesel and gasoline parts of the business.

“They said if you really look at everything, the EPA has just basically turned their heads the other way for 50 years,” said Casperson. “They told me to go back to 1975 or so and read everything they’ve published, and it's quite clear that there are no exemptions stating that you’re allowed to do anything with a street car. All of those documents from 2015 or so are really just a restructuring of what they had already previously published in the 1970s.”

"Prior to the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the Clean Air Act did not prohibit individuals from tampering with emissions controls on their personal vehicles, and did not contain a direct prohibition against aftermarket defeat devices,” An EPA spokesperson confirmed to R&T. “ In 1990 Congress amended the Clean Air Act to prohibit all persons from tampering with motor vehicles’ emissions controls, prohibit the manufacture, sale, or installation of defeat devices, and require onboard diagnostic systems to be phased in for light-duty vehicles by model year 1996."

The EPA website is home to a collection of case resolutions related to the CAA dating back to 2005. The first aftermarket-related emissions case was settled in 2009, when Reborn Company LLC was fined $1350 for bio-diesel swapping two gasoline-powered Land Rover Defenders. Amazingly, the agency did not take any enforcement action against gasoline engine part suppliers or race shops until 2018. This is to say, there are two eras for EPA enforcement; there’s the development of its diesel crackdown, and then comes everything else. Evans Tuning was the first to get hit with a $4223 fine for selling 103 handheld tuners and exhaust systems for gasoline vehicles. ModBargains.com and Vivid Distributing were also fined for their role in selling aftermarket exhaust systems for gasoline vehicles in 2018, facing $7,000 and $200,000 fines, respectively. Things ramped up in 2019, with 10 different aftermarket companies facing fines for their role in modifying gasoline engines. These companies included huge names like Flowmaster, Magnaflow, More Power Tuning, and VMP Tuning among others. Fines from these companies totaled $1,450,959 in 2019 alone. Nine more cases against gasoline shops have been settled in the years since, with fines totaling $3,421,975. It is important to note that these resolutions only highlight the battles that the EPA won in court, which explains the absence of shops like PFI Speed. The list also doesn't account for the number of companies that opted to cut deals with the EPA to avoid lawsuits, such as eBay Motors. The timeline, however, makes things clear. Before its crackdown on cheating diesels, gas-related tuners faced little to no scrutiny. After the rolling coal trend, however, fines started for everybody.

Pypes Performance Exhaust is a small company, with Casperson noting that a larger fine related to this case would have put them under. Based on the number of infractions committed by the shop, the EPA did have every right to demand more money. That said, Casperson went as far as to say that the EPA agents on the case seemed somewhat embarrassed about putting the small team through so much stress and financial strain.

“They were very nice, very patient with us,” Casperson told R&T. “They seemed to understand and were almost a little embarrassed that they got this little company and that they were putting us through hell.”

Like many folks inside the aftermarket, Casperson is convinced that this wave of enforcement from the EPA is only going to continue to get more strict as the era of electrification draws nearer.

“We’re still nervous,” Casperson told R&T. “We’re all wondering when they’re going to change the rules again, or not even change the rules, but rather enforce the rules that are there even heavier with even more reporting. In my opinion they don’t want to create any national uproar. I think this is just the way they are going to do it. They just keep pushing people off, and it's going to be a very slow process.”

Despite his somewhat gloomy outlook, Casperson doesn’t believe the EPA is actually out there trying to close companies down. He doesn’t believe any part of the federal government would be interested in behaving in that way. The fines are instead designed to sting, as the agency’s stated goal is to curb the rampant installation of components that impact vehicle emissions.

“Companies that make and sell aftermarket defeat devices used to remove emission controls pollute our air, harm people’s health, and undercut federal, state, and local efforts to attain air quality goals,” an EPA spokesperson told R&T. “The Act clearly prohibits making and selling defeat devices, and the EPA will continue to enforce the plain meaning of the Act.”

Whether or not the diesel community is ready to own up to its role in the increasing pressures facing the aftermarket, that’s a sentiment shared by many in the business. That’s particularly true of shops that continue to misbehave at this stage in the game, as they only deliver the EPA more leverage to continue investigating. Things are never going to go back to how they once were, and how the aftermarket will choose to respond moving forward is unclear. It’s possible that the situation will cool down after the emissions compliance NCI expires next year, but the millions of dollars worth of fines coming into the agency might suggest otherwise.

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

Dec 02, 2022 (The Expresswire) -- Final Report will add the analysis of the impact of Russia-Ukraine War and COVID-19 on this industry.

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