This happens in almost all industries. Big oils' repetitive attempts to kill EVs, Big Pharmas, insurance and hospitals lobbying against healthcare reforms, Big Banks working against finance regulations etc.
How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions
41–50 of 157 posts
Re: How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately you seem to be in the minority. People are still happily buying VW.
Why "unfortunately"? Would it be better if every company that does a bad thing was forced to just close shop? If that be the case I'm pretty sure we'll have to shut down Tesla within a couple of years over their "Autopilot"/"Full Self Driving" claims.
"Do a bad thing" is a pretty major understatement of the degree of criminality we're talking about here. Over-representing the capabilities of Autopilot is a totally different thing that embedding a defeat device to defraud every national regulatory agency.
Re: How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 shr…
> Filling it takes 5 minutes once every 1-2 years
Isn‘t this a part of the problem? The urea tanks are way too small and need refilling way too seldom which means a too low urea usage? Volkswagen wanted urea to be refilled by your service station and not by the customers themselves because they might have found this inconvenient.
Re: How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions
#44I'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…
> There can be quite reasonable use cases for that information
What reasonable use case is there for a detection of the test cycle just from ECU information? If you're just testing stuff surely you have access to the ECU to just set a flag manually for anything you need?
Re: How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions
#45I live in france, and I often spot cars that have a grey/blue smokes. Many other cars also have this awful smell. Here, every 2 years, cars must legally be examined in a "controle technique", like an exam which controls several aspects of a vehicle. I wonder if those fumes are legal, and I really wonder if people can manage to cheat at that exam, because I think I'm noticing an epidemic of those fumes. How can I real…
In Spain we have a similar exam and unfortunately I know that there are indeed people that cheat. I don't know the details but there are ways to make their car emit less smoke only that day, and then go back to "normal". Probably we should do as many Asians do in this, and make it normal to go out with a face mask. Not sure what kind of masks have to be used to effectively not breathe pollution, and their effectivity…
no mask can filter particles
Re: How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions
#46I work in this industry, so I've been following it from the start. I've run test cells and written software to analyze the results from the emissions cycles that the government uses to validate the emissions compliance. I have worked around and for a very large diesel engine manufacturer who I am convinced does not cheat on this test. You'll understand why, below. I recently leveled-up my career, and I now work with…
"Excuse me, but what more did the author expect the government to do?"
It is not some outrageous expectation that the $8,000,000,000+/year, 14,000+ employee EPA and/or DOT independently verify the real world emissions performance of passenger cars and other vehicles. The cars were so grossly out of compliance that anyone with a ordinary field emissions testing machine could have caught it.
If, as is very likely the case, the regulators had no technical resources among their hordes of lawyers they could have asked any number of publicly funded universities to perform the actual investigation and go beyond the agreed upon and easily fooled test regime. The discovery was actually made by US academics with very limited financing.
This institutional pencil whipping is SOP at EPA. GOA had a gasoline powered alarm clock (among other improbable devices) Energy Star certified as part of an investigation in 2010. Energy Star certifications are literally pencil whipped through an automated system with no human review.
When the EPA found itself answering for their part in the emissions scandal in public hearings there was no defense. They didn't even try to cite limited budgets[1] -- the go-to excuse every time some regulator comes up short -- as a cause. They just failed.
That's difficult to accept for some, and so all manner of rationalizations are employed to dilute that simple truth. But I'm not among them.
Re: How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions
#47European here. My next car will be electric, likely a Tesla. The dieselgate is the reason why I'm not even considering Volkswagen's upcoming 'ID' family of electric cars. I've similar feeling about the whole traditional auto industry.
My next car will be "no car at all". Even electric cars have huge externalities that you do not pay for, but your children, namely, the disposal of the batteries, pollution created by the manufacturing, costly extraction of rare earths etc. Instead we should heavily invest in high-speed trains.
High-speed trains are wonderful where the population density is sufficiently high, but in more sparsely populated parts, the car (and, for longer distances, the plane) is likely the only viable solution for decades to come.
With that as a starting point, the cars and planes might as well be electric. (Or hydrogen powered!)
Re: How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions
#48Re: How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> There can be quite reasonable use cases for that information What reasonable use case is there for a detection of the test cycle just from ECU information? If you're just testing stuff surely you have access to the ECU to just set a flag manually for anything you need?
Could be reasonabe safety features like not performing emergency breaking, or functions aiding the testing process (without interfering with it of course).
Re: How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
My next car will be "no car at all". Even electric cars have huge externalities that you do not pay for, but your children, namely, the disposal of the batteries, pollution created by the manufacturing, costly extraction of rare earths etc. Instead we should heavily invest in high-speed trains.
High-speed trains are wonderful where the population density is sufficiently high, but in more sparsely populated parts, the car (and, for longer distances, the plane) is likely the only viable solution for decades to come. With that as a starting point, the cars and planes might as well be electric. (Or hydrogen powered!)
I think this reasoning pins down the wrong variables of the equation. You can pick your housing and location based on not owning a car (among other criteria). And it scales too. And for decision-makers it's responsible to nudge your citizenship to this direction.