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How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions

theguardian.com

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Re: How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions

#21

Post by alkonaut »

ummonk wrote: post #7

I remember Mazda having trouble making their diesel engines performant while conforming to California emissions regulations, and wondering why they were having so much trouble compared to European car manufacturers. Then this scandal broke and it was obvious why.

I wonder why mazda or some other competitor didn’t find this by doing their own research? I make software for structural engineering and when some competitor launches a program that makes “better designs” it has usually turned out to be because they simply don’t follow the design codes/regulations. We wouldn’t be pushed from the market by that - we’d fund the analysis, reverse engineering and legal processes necessary to show the competitor is cheating.

Re: How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions

#22

Post by sjwright »

alkonaut wrote: post #21
ummonk wrote: post #7

I remember Mazda having trouble making their diesel engines performant while conforming to California emissions regulations, and wondering why they were having so much trouble compared to European car manufacturers. Then this scandal broke and it was obvious why.

I wonder why mazda or some other competitor didn’t find this by doing their own research? I make software for structural engineering and when some competitor launches a program that makes “better designs” it has usually turned out to be because they simply don’t follow the design codes/regulations. We wouldn’t be pushed from the market by that - we’d fund the analysis, reverse engineering and legal processes necessar…

If Mazda was attempting and failing to get their cars to pass the defined emissions test, one can imagine they were only ever testing their own and their competitor's cars under those test conditions—which we now know triggered the cheat mechanism in VW cars.

But yes, had the research group not performed their on-road tests, it would have only been a matter of time before an honest car maker would have realised their competitor's sums don't add up and perform or fund their own independent investigation.

(Perhaps this is exactly what happened behind the scenes? It's known that CARB ordered the research due to discrepancies in US v EU numbers—but someone pushed them to look at the numbers closely. They put a lot of work in to perform these tests so it couldn't have been on a whim.)

Re: How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions

#23

Post by alkonaut »

Reason077 wrote: post #18
ummonk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To think that cars could use diesel engines, be cost-competitive with gasoline-fueled alternatives, AND pass the ridiculously-low emissions standards that lawmakers have arbitrarily decreed was simply wishful thinking. The emissions standards are perfectly sensible for maintaining good air quality. It definitely looks like it is wishful thinking for diesel engines to meet those standards and be cost-competitive with…

> It definitely looks like it is wishful thinking for diesel engines to meet those standards and be cost-competitive with gasoline-fueled alternatives The technology that would have brought "Dieselgate" diesels into compliance with EU emissions rules was said to cost manufacturers something on the order of US$100 per vehicle: Selective catalytic reduction (SCR) with a refillable AdBlue (urea) tank. However, prior to…

The Euro6 standard was launched back in 2014, following the Euro4- and 5 standards that most of the diesel-gate cars adhered to. Most cars manufactured from around 2016/17 are Euro6, and as far as I’m aware Urea tanks are in use on most or all.

I honestly don’t understand why it would have been an issue to have it before. My diesel tank is 65L and it takes me over 1000km. Even if they had made a 10L Urea tank and shrunk the gas tank to make room for it, the range is still more than enough. Filling it takes 5 minutes once every 1-2 years and costs about the same as windshield wiper fluid. Can’t see why that would make the car unappealing either.

Re: How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions

#24

Post by rurban »

makomk wrote: post #6

" Schmied responded that as long as emissions went down when limits were tightened, his department didn’t mind they were many times higher than allowed." Some context for this: the official European test cycle was known not to be representative of real driving conditions. Because it was less aggressive than real-world driving, it pretty much always overstated fuel efficiency and understated emissions. So real-world e…

> The US test cycle is better.

Then you never heard about the US test cycle cheating scandal. It's not better, it's actually simplier to cheat. The US test cycle is tailored to a more realistic city environment with a lot of stop's and go's, cold starts, and requires an actual professional driver. No automation. These drivers learned soo much how to cheat the system, that they were in high demand and they were all held exclusively by the US car industry, so Asian and European companies were at disadvantage. That's why the Asian industry agreed to use the European test cycles and not the more realistic US system. It was too expensive and too easily tricked. The European standard was cheaper and fairer (those times). Until they found a way to trick it also.

Re: How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions

#25

Post by pintxo »

walrus01 wrote: post #10

I've seen claims that VW's whole diesel emissions and engine control subsystem was actually contracted out to Bosch. But VW execs knew about the software defeat device.

Afaik, yes. bosch was contracted to provide the engine control modules, including features to automatically disable the emission reduction measures. Boach apparently wrote in the contracts that such disablig was only to be used for internal testing, not in production.

Re: How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions

#27

Post by blub »

ummonk wrote: post #7

I remember Mazda having trouble making their diesel engines performant while conforming to California emissions regulations, and wondering why they were having so much trouble compared to European car manufacturers. Then this scandal broke and it was obvious why.

Were they having technical trouble or just having trouble finding a cost-efficient solution?

AFAIK the technical solution (Urea injection) works fine, but it's expensive and VW didn't want to include it in all cars.

Re: How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions

#28

Post by benj111 »

carboy wrote: post #26

I could never understand how something that was less refined, diesel, meaning that it had more unnecessary “stuff” could produce less emissions. Diesel always did, and always will, as far as I’m concerned he snake oil when it comes to emissions.

Its less refined in the sense of less cracking.

It contains more energy for a given volume, so you get better fuel economy than with petrol. It might not be better for the particulates and NOx that we are now optimising for, but its better for CO2, that we were optimising for. So I don't think the snake oil label is warranted.

Re: How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions

#29

Post by _ph_ »

walrus01 wrote: post #10

I've seen claims that VW's whole diesel emissions and engine control subsystem was actually contracted out to Bosch. But VW execs knew about the software defeat device.

The controlling unit indeed comes from Bosch, but it is a generic unit that can control any kind of engine. The car manufacturer using this unit programs it to perform the actual world, mostly by specifying parameter sets for its operation. The car manufacturer has for example to determine, how exactly the ignition needs to be set up for a given temperature and load etc. There are plenty sensor inputs these profiles can depend on like engine temperature, revs, load, outside temperature, speed of the car. The Bosch software can offer the "test dectection" as one of the inputs. There can be quite reasonable use cases for that information, but that VW used it in the way they did, was VWs choices. The same or a similar control from Bosch unit is probably used by many other car manufacturers, but without abusing this specific "feature".

As the article writes, there are other "strange" engine configurations with other car manufacturers, like using the outside temperature. Reducing or switching off the exhaust cleaning system at outside temperatures below 17C (the tests are guaranteed to be done at 20C) achieves a similar effect to what VW was doing without literally breaking the law by using a defeat device.

Re: How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions

#30

Post by bboreham »

alkonaut wrote: post #21
ummonk wrote: post #7

I remember Mazda having trouble making their diesel engines performant while conforming to California emissions regulations, and wondering why they were having so much trouble compared to European car manufacturers. Then this scandal broke and it was obvious why.

I wonder why mazda or some other competitor didn’t find this by doing their own research? I make software for structural engineering and when some competitor launches a program that makes “better designs” it has usually turned out to be because they simply don’t follow the design codes/regulations. We wouldn’t be pushed from the market by that - we’d fund the analysis, reverse engineering and legal processes necessar…

My conclusion, from the first time I thought about it, is that they were all cheating.

Engineers move job; they talk to each other. Every car company had to have people who knew the truth and, if they were being unfairly competed against, could publish this truth.

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