Drive Clean

About Drive Clean

Ontario's Drive Clean program helps Ontarians make smart choices about the way we maintain and drive our vehicles. Driving clean through proper vehicle maintenance can save on fuel consumption and prolong the life of your vehicle. But more importantly, you will be doing the right thing for the air we breathe.

Drive Clean has a program for heavy duty vehicles, such as large trucks and buses, and a program for light duty vehicles such as passenger cars, vans, light trucks and sport utility vehicles. The light duty program area extends across southern Ontario from Windsor to Ottawa, the area of the province with the highest population density and the greatest number of vehicles. The heavy duty program area includes the entire province.

Under Drive Clean, your vehicle must have an emissions test for registration renewal, beginning when it is five years old. If your vehicle requires an emissions test, you will receive a reminder as part of your vehicle licence renewal application from the Ministry of Transportation. An emissions test is also required for an ownership transfer for vehicles with a model year older than the current calendar year, to help ensure that consumers do not unwittingly purchase a used vehicle with emissions problems.

Improvements in vehicle emissions technologies continue to reduce harmful emissions from new vehicles. However, these vehicles can become heavy polluters too, unless they are properly maintained. Many older vehicles without the newest technologies will be on our roads for years to come.

Through Drive Clean, we can all make a positive contribution to the quality of our air with proper maintenance of our vehicles and the correction of problems identified by an emissions test. Drive Clean identifies more than 225,000 excessively polluting cars and trucks each year.