The backstory here: EU law mandates doing something to reduce pollution if it's too high. German law prohibits various kinds of discrimination. For example, a simple ban on half the cars on Monday and the other on Tuesday would bother large plumber companies much less than independent plumbers who need a carful of tools and have only one car. What actions are the cities permitted to take, and/or required.
Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules
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Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules
#12Is this backed by real science? I was under the impression that modern diesels were highly efficient and quite within the acceptable emission standards.
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Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules
#13Is this backed by real science? I was under the impression that modern diesels were highly efficient and quite within the acceptable emission standards.
There's a big difference between general "emissions" which a lot of people take colloquially to just mean greenhouse gases (and CO2 in particular with combustion engines), and then the small particulates and other things (like NOx) that create worse local air conditions[1]. Most "modern" diesels in use do still have the latter problem. I think at the very cutting edge, if you maintain a very good filter and operate in favorable conditions you can cut those emissions dramatically, but as far as I know it isn't widespread among the personal diesel fleet.
[1] http://theconversation.com/fact-check-are-diesel-cars-really...
Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules
#14Note that this ruling is only to clarify that cities are allowed to implement car bans on their own without a federal directive in place.
Now we will have to wait and see if the cities will actually be sued into having to implement such bans.
Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules
#15Is this backed by real science? I was under the impression that modern diesels were highly efficient and quite within the acceptable emission standards.
The emission standards in question are per m² in the city, not per car. It doesn't matter whether the emissions come from 1000 clean or 100 dirty cars.
Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules
#16Partially related: "Fiat Chrysler is reportedly ditching diesel cars by 2022" (https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/26/17053362/fiat-chrysler-di...). Diesel sales are collapsing all over Europe, I think one of the latest reports puts the number of new Diesel cars sold in France at just under 50%, while they used to be at 75% four or five years ago. The writing is on the wall.
Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules
#17The backstory here: EU law mandates doing something to reduce pollution if it's too high. German law prohibits various kinds of discrimination. For example, a simple ban on half the cars on Monday and the other on Tuesday would bother large plumber companies much less than independent plumbers who need a carful of tools and have only one car. What actions are the cities permitted to take, and/or required.
>EU law mandates doing something to reduce pollution if it's too high
And it mandates that for around 15 years now.
One of the cities (Stuttgart) has been exceeding the pollution limits for at least 8 years now.
It's quite strange that it took so long to finally force the city to do something effective.
Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules
#18Excellent news for the air quality in German cities. We've been blatantly breaking German and EU law for years now.
Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules
#19It's important to note that popularity of diesel is the doing of the German government. The fuel is subsidized for the sake of the environment because it's more efficient. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/eb8be120-de5...
The situation is similar to Germany's work on its electric power sources. Nuclear was turned off because it's dangerous. Now Germany spews out about same carbon as before giant investments in solar, electricity is four times the price as in US, plus they now have to buy from France cause they don't produce enough.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca...
Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules
#20It's important to note that popularity of diesel is the doing of the German government. The fuel is subsidized for the sake of the environment because it's more efficient. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/eb8be120-de5... The situation is similar to Germany's work on its electric power sources. Nuclear was turned off because it's dangerous. Now Germany spews out about same carbon as before giant investm…
Sorry, but some of your statements are only partially correct. In fact germany exports more energy than it imports. (https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/news/2016/germa...)
Also the popularity of diesel might have other factors as well.