Nissan Motor Company announced yesterday that it has developed a catalyst for gasoline cars that halves the use of precious metal components to clean tail-pipe emissions. The said catalyst promises big cost savings amid high commodity prices.

As Japan’s third-biggest automaker, Nissan, utilized nano-technology to prevent clustering of the fine metal particles present in catalysts under high temperature conditions, enabling the use of less material to clean exhaust emissions

Common automotive catalytic converters use catalysts that has a mix of platinum, rhodium and palladium to trigger a chemical reaction with polluting nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons to create non-toxic compounds.

Nissan released a statement that this new technology in the field of catalytic converters will be introduced in a new vehicle slated for launch in the second half of the business year ending in March 2009, and expanded into other models. Also, the said technology will be shared with French partner Renault SA.

Automakers have been hurt by rising commodity prices, booking bigger-than-expected raw material expenses for the latest quarter. In fact, the average platinum prices during April-June rose 9 per cent from a year-earlier, rhodium jumped 24 percent and palladium climbed 6 percent, as reported by Platinum Today.

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