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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

#151
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe just a few bricks short of a load. All their points have been refuted but they still don’t get it.

Were they? As I said (I'll say again it but slower) Tesla is the only manufacturer with multiple driver fatalities while "self driving". Plus the countless crashes with no fatalities. Either the description of the Autopilot's capabilities is misleading making drivers assume it's more capable, or drivers with severe comprehension issues are over represented among Tesla drivers, to the point where they actually kill th…

> Were they?

Yes, many times.

> Tesla is the only manufacturer with multiple driver fatalities while "self driving". Plus the countless crashes with no fatalities.

Again it's pretty obvious that you have no idea what you're talking about here. That statement is not only grossly false but also ignorant (seem like a theme with your comments). For one, autopilot features are really just glorified Lane Keeping Assist System (LKAS) and Traffic-Aware Cruise Control (TACC).

They are one for the umpteenth time NOT "self-driving" any Tesla owner knows this (prove me wrong otherwise my $1K offer still stands). There are ZERO indications that even remotely suggests that the car is "self-driving.

From the moment you take delivery and they show you the features of the car, to turning on each individual driver assist features and actually engaging TACC and LKAS. Zero, nada, none. So stop saying this. Go find any Tesla owner discussion group/forum on the internet and ask actual owners. You will quickly see how wrong your assumptions are.

More importantly, TKAS and LKAS have been around for a while now and the only significant difference with Tesla's version is the auto lane change functionality.

Below are just a few other safety systems that have TKAS and LKAS:

1. Honda Sensing 2. Toyota Safety Sense™ (TSS) 3. AcuraWatch 3. Some Mercedes Benz vehicles with the Driver Assistance Package

There have been plenty of fatalities with these systems as well. But guess what? you don't see them in the news.

Some Tesla owners on reddit even talked about the differences with these systems from their anecdotal experiences and found that Tesla's implementation was better (these are actual owners not marketing BS). i.e. Some won't even give any visual/audible warnings when disengaging.

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/6em5kz/non_tes...

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

#152
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come to Europe to the cities where one actually finds a job and then try to use the public transportation for that 1h 30m commute time, easily done in 30m with a car.

Already there, but it's not like that. 1h 30m in public transport would get me to another town.

If you are lucky enough to live in suburbs with a job that works for you and good connection, then all the best.

Just don't assume it actually scales for everyone, specially when the closest bus stop requires 15m walking for a bus that only comes around every 30m, just to get to the next connection point.

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

#153
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Already there, but it's not like that. 1h 30m in public transport would get me to another town.

If you are lucky enough to live in suburbs with a job that works for you and good connection, then all the best. Just don't assume it actually scales for everyone, specially when the closest bus stop requires 15m walking for a bus that only comes around every 30m, just to get to the next connection point.

[deleted]

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

#154
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will probably have to drop some of your hobbies too if we don't manage to limit Global Warming to below 2 degrees.

Yeah, well, I did things the other way around and picked my job around not having a commute. That means remote, I work from my apartment. I still have a car, but I drive much less than those who commute by car every day. It might be sitting unused in the lot for weeks (I have my feet & bicycle for grocery store trips). But when I need it, I need it, the public infra and ridesharing simply isn't there. (But I occasion…

It doesn't make sense to quantize emissions by country to decide whether your choices matter. (Or by by other attributes)

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

#155
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, well, I did things the other way around and picked my job around not having a commute. That means remote, I work from my apartment. I still have a car, but I drive much less than those who commute by car every day. It might be sitting unused in the lot for weeks (I have my feet & bicycle for grocery store trips). But when I need it, I need it, the public infra and ridesharing simply isn't there. (But I occasion…

It doesn't make sense to quantize emissions by country to decide whether your choices matter. (Or by by other attributes)

Huh, why not?

Things people do generally become a problem only at scale. If the scale isn't there, there's no problem. There is no global law, everything we regulate is regional. The consequences of regulating a speck of noise in the statistics does not matter; regulating a major contributor does.

I can go on a camping trip and light an open fire in the woods, no problem. My neighbor can do so too, no problem. If all the 1.3 billion people in India started doing it, we'd probably have to do something about it.

This applies to pretty much everything you can do. In Californian drought, it may be occasionally necessary to restrict the use of water for watering lawns or washing cars, but here we don't give a shit because we aren't running out of clean water. In areas with expensive desalination, all water use is rather consequential.

There are low density regions where it's ok to heat your home by burning wood, it will never cause an air quality issue and the planet won't die as long as the world's population is not concentrated in these areas doing the same thing (then it would not be a low density region).

There are high density cities where they're starting to reroute traffic around it and collect tolls from those who insist on driving through, and there are low density areas where it doesn't matter.

There are areas where little to no energy is spent on heating homes, and then there are areas like Finland with cold winters and a lot of home heating.

The attributes are absolutely relevant, we need to put things into perspective and attack problems where the scale is an issue. Planet earth doesn't care that you're pure of heart, or that you breathe less CO2 than your neighbor, it cares about the absolute quantity of greenhouse gases that are shot into the atmosphere. That is not solved by fighting the fight where the quantity is relatively zero. And yes, that means the world is unfair, and you may be subject to more restrictions depending on where you happened to be born, or where you chose to move. Holding everyone on the planet to the same standard was never a thing (unfortunately the globalists don't seem to understand this and we're occasionally suffering the consequences of regulation made by & for people a thousand miles south of us, in a different climate, thanks EU).

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

#156
post #56
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>You can pick your housing and location based on not owning a car Only if you want to live in a large city and don't do anything outdoors. I go skiing, hiking, mountain biking, camping 3-4 times a week. Where I live (the Alps), it is extremely difficult to not own a car. There is no infrastructure and the terrain is unfriendly. There isn't a housing or location option in Europe that allows me to give up my car and ha…

I personally think online car rental is very adequate for this. Locally, there's a number of very affordable services (usually there's tiers of membership fees that gives you steep discounts) that do this and I know many people that don't own cars but instead use this service somewhat regularly. Especially the flexibility of being able to pick up any type of car at a whim is very useful.

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

#157
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not autonomous driving fatalities. They can’t be, because there is simply no autonomous driving. You are very confused. Autopilot is not autonomous driving.

It's self driving. It's not L5 but the car was taking the decisions in that limited set of conditions. And that's the whole point, the car is unable to take the correct decisions but people still trust it to do so. Why would they? Unless you'll tell me Tesla drivers are intellectually challenged then it must be that they somehow get the wrong impression of what the car can do. How come this doesn't happen to any othe…

>If nobody can explain why so many Tesla drivers are suicidal then the blame must lie with the system or the way it's described.

I see. You are looking to explain the facts and you have three theories here. 1) Suicidal drivers; 2) Bad system; 3) Bad system description.

Let’s just agree it’s not #1. Effectively suicidal you could say, but let’s agree they were (likely) not actually intending suicide.

Number 2 is ruled out because the system was never designed to be fully unmonitored... blaming it would be like blaming a seatbelt for an injury sustained by someone who wears the seatbelt incorrectly.

Number 3 seems like a likely possibility on the face of it, but the system is actually pretty well described in practice so I would suggest another, fourth, possibility which does not appear on your list:

4) The drivers were imperfect humans who, as some will do, failed to heed the ample safety warnings and were unlucky enough to encounter situations where this failure led to disastrous results.

I’ll note this kind of thing happens all the time in cars without autopilot as well. You can point out that in those cases an autopilot system was not in the picture, but that’s a circular argument... of course it wasn’t. People will sometimes be foolish. No system can protect all fools all the time. Expecting otherwise is unreasonable. You’re just blaming Tesla because its autopilot is the first / most prominent such system that has been rolled out to production vehicles. Of course there will be a few foolish people amongst the hundreds of thousands of Tesla drivers. That’s on the people, not the system or the description. Nobody ever promised autopilot would be a perfect nanny that can fend off all dangers and control all human behaviors.

>nobody can explain why so many Tesla drivers are suicidal

Not suicidal. Just foolish. And not “so many.” We are talking about a handful of incidents, in fact fewer than can be counted on one hand.

Fake outrage.

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