40 CFR § 1036.745 - End-of-year CO2 credit deficits.
Except as allowed by this section, we may void the certificate of any engine family certified to an FCL above the applicable standard for which you do not have sufficient credits by the deadline for submitting the final report.
(a) Your certificate for an engine family for which you do not have sufficient CO2 credits will not be void if you remedy the deficit with surplus credits within three model years. For example, if you have a credit deficit of 500 Mg for an engine family at the end of model year 2015, you must generate (or otherwise obtain) a surplus of at least 500 Mg in that same averaging set by the end of model year 2018.
(b) You may not bank or trade away CO2 credits in the averaging set in any model year in which you have a deficit.
(c) You may apply only surplus credits to your deficit. You may not apply credits to a deficit from an earlier model year if they were generated in a model year for which any of your engine families for that averaging set had an end-of-year credit deficit.
(d) You must notify us in writing how you plan to eliminate the credit deficit within the specified time frame. If we determine that your plan is unreasonable or unrealistic, we may deny an application for certification for a vehicle family if its FEL would increase your credit deficit. We may determine that your plan is unreasonable or unrealistic based on a consideration of past and projected use of specific technologies, the historical sales mix of your vehicle models, your commitment to limit production of higher-emission vehicles, and expected access to traded credits. We may also consider your plan unreasonable if your credit deficit increases from one model year to the next. We may require that you send us interim reports describing your progress toward resolving your credit deficit over the course of a model year.
(e) If you do not remedy the deficit with surplus credits within three model years, we may void your certificate for that engine family. We may void the certificate based on your end-of-year report. Note that voiding a certificate applies ab initio. Where the net deficit is less than the total amount of negative credits originally generated by the family, we will void the certificate only with respect to the number of engines needed to reach the amount of the net deficit. For example, if the original engine family generated 500 Mg of negative credits, and the manufacturer's net deficit after three years was 250 Mg, we would void the certificate with respect to half of the engines in the family.
(f) For purposes of calculating the statute of limitations, the following actions are all considered to occur at the expiration of the deadline for offsetting a deficit as specified in paragraph (a) of this section:
(1) Failing to meet the requirements of paragraph (a) of this section.
(2) Failing to satisfy the conditions upon which a certificate was issued relative to offsetting a deficit.
(3) Selling, offering for sale, introducing or delivering into U.S. commerce, or importing vehicles that are found not to be covered by a certificate as a result of failing to offset a deficit.