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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

#91

Post by jordanbeiber »

justasimpleman wrote: post #37
Yaggo wrote: post #15

European 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.

This is ideal.

Unfortunately the society has been pushed into “car as a requirement” territory for ages.

I commend the effort, and I’d like to not need a car... perhaps I don’t, but it will require a few major changes.

It’s crazy that car pools are not more common, btw.

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

#92

Post by UncleEntity »

xedeon wrote: post #52
akanet wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

> embedding a defeat device to defraud every national regulatory agency. Cite this claim.

> Cite this claim.

It is, literally, a large portion of TFA.

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

#93

Post by wil421 »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #81
wil421 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can VW create an engine, cheat, and sell it to Chrysler? Then Chrysler has to put a urea tank to meet emissions. How did some brilliant engineer writing the spec or the third parties not notice?

An SCR (and EGR, and DOC, et. al.) is a "given" in this equation. There's no hope of passing emissions without it. Even on gas engines, you still need a catalytic converter to pass.

My point is VW sold a TDI engine in the US. The same engine was sold to Jeep and used in the Grand Cherokee but with extra emission controls like urea. If I worked at Jeep or one of the 3rd party testers I would’ve made a lot of noise about VWs lack of a urea tank.

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

#94

Post by hjk05 »

sidcool wrote: post #41

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.

Big Parma is lobbying FOR healthcare reforms.

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

#95

Post by natch »

close04 wrote: post #57
natch wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have misread what Tesla says about these technologies. They state very clearly that FSD is not here yet, and they also are very clear about the limitations of Autopilot. The problem is that people (like you, for example) mistakenly assume there are “claims” beyond the statements that are made.

> They state very clearly They state it in the fineprint. This is what the Tesla Autopilot page used to say for years (this is a 1+ year old screenshot) [0]. Which part of that is accurate? How clear are they about the limitations and the real capabilities of the system? Tesla took the narrow areas where those systems can do a reasonably good job and extrapolated to the whole self-driving experience, blaming regulati…

No, you are just proving my point.

The screenshot is talking about future functionality that is not released yet, but you are mistakenly evaluating it as patently false when you have absolutely no way to know, since it isn’t released yet.

“System B will do X” is not invalidated by observing that System A does not currently do X.

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

#96

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

blattimwind wrote: post #75
jokoon wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no mask can filter particles

Filtering airborne particulates is pretty much the baseline reason to use masks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (However surgical masks aren't meant to do that, they're only meant to catch things expelled from you, not the other way around. So I guess your interjection is somewhat correct in that running around with a surgical mask does pretty much nil to improve the quality of the air you inhale.)

Doctors also have masks to protect them from external things (for example, when they deal with patients that have tuberculosis), although I've just learned from Google that they are not technically called masks, but respirators (N95 respirators).

They are quite uncomfortable to wear, though. You can breathe just fine for extended period of time but it feels (at least to me, a layman in these things) like you get less air. I wouldn't wear it as an everyday thing.

I have no idea if there are more comfortable solutions that can handle pollution.

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

#97

Post by fulafel »

Yaggo wrote: post #15

European 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.

Teslas are still huge in mass (2000+ kg) and space/dimensions compared to what's needed from a car, and have a correspondingly big carbon footprint from building the thing and batteries. We should aim for 500 kg cars. We could do a 4 person 500 kg car in 1957 after all (Fiat 500).

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

#98

Post by close04 »

xedeon wrote: post #84
close04 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have to prove anything, I know they're not flat out lying [0], they're just misleading. Many drivers (ask the dead) are/were under the impression that the car can drive itself. And Tesla doesn't do much to make this distinction clear. [0] Except for the "we'll have it next year" bit. That's just to get a little more cashflow, pretty sure not even Musk expects to have FSD ready "next year" unless it's a perpet…

> I don’t have to prove anything You can’t just make bold claims and not back them up... Makes you look imprudent. > Many drivers (ask the dead) are/were under the impression that the car can drive itself. Everytime you engage Autosteer. You get a warning that says “Always keep your hands on the steering wheel” and “Be prepared to take over at any time”. More importantly, each driver assistance update also explicitly…

> You can’t just make bold claims and not back them up

That's not how the burden of proof works. Tesla is claiming the following:

> All new Tesla cars have the hardware needed in the future for full self-driving in almost all circumstances.

> The future use of these features without supervision is dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions.

Where is the proof of that? The suggestion is that everything is in place short of regulatory approval. And it's always "next year". The result is this [0]. People genuinely believing and insisting that car can drive itself. The result is the only driver fatalities while autonomously driving were in a Tesla.

Do you see how people interpret this as "well it's there but you know, pesky regulators want to delay it by testing and stuff". If the vast swaths of internet commenters and drivers that can no longer provide an opinion is not proof enough that the statements are misleading I don't know what is [0] (again). You may see through them but it doesn't make them less misleading. That whole page is designed to give an inflated impression of the state and capabilities of the system regardless of consequences.

Other manufacturers have at least equally capable hardware and software but none make these claims, because they are misleading and will cause deaths.

What would you think if someone sold you a mobile phone claiming it's able to crack any encryption no matter how strong? Of course it might take longer than the lifetime of the universe but hey, it is possible. Not lying, just misleading. So wanna buy a phone?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tesla+self+driv...

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

#99

Post by UncleEntity »

eebynight wrote: post #86
jokoon wrote: post #34

I 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…

I have an older diesel VW. It is extremely common for people to run tunes that disable the check engine light that is produced when you delete the exhaust gas recirculation valve (EGR), urea pump and diesel particulate filter (DPF). For things like the EGR, blocking it off is simply installing a bracket or two and closing off some vacuum lines. I can imagine people would simply reinstall this and swap the tune to pas…

> In the US, for emissions, all you have to do is not run any check engine lights when at the test center which is easy to do in the software tune.

Which is very disappointing...

When I first moved to Arizona I had a '67 Galaxy and that thing got to run on the dyno in the emissions office but when I got my truck to replace it (not having AC in Arizona isn't fun) all they did was plug in into the computer and charge me more for the test.

My (carburated) motorcycle was in between, they couldn't run it on the dyno and couldn't plug a computer into it so just tested it at idle -- which seemed pretty pointless to me, even being all hopped-up it still got better gas mileage than most cars on the road, though it did get pretty horrible gas mileage for a motorcycle considering I had to run premium in it.

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

#100

Post by fulafel »

maccam94 wrote: post #59
justasimpleman wrote: post #37

Earlier 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.

Except lithium ion batteries are very recyclable, and rare earth elements aren't in limited supply, they're just usually very sparsely distributed.

I think the industrial scale, cost efficient recycling bit is untried, and we don't know if it will come to wide use soon enough to help with co2 footprint of cars?
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