Nearly all new diesel cars exceed official pollution limits
theguardian.com
Nearly all new diesel cars exceed official pollution limits
1–10 of 133 posts
Re: Nearly all new diesel cars exceed official pollution limits
#2> There is no suggestion that any of the cars tested broke the law on emissions limits or used any cheat devices.
Since all these cars passed the laboratory test, that means there must be something very wrong with the test and the way the standards are enforced. Or all car makers do cheat.
Re: Nearly all new diesel cars exceed official pollution limits
#3> There is no suggestion that any of the cars tested broke the law on emissions limits or used any cheat devices. Since all these cars passed the laboratory test, that means there must be something very wrong with the test and the way the standards are enforced. Or all car makers do cheat.
I thought it was common knowledge the lab tests are a joke? Has been posted on HN as well IIRC.
Re: Nearly all new diesel cars exceed official pollution limits
#4Color me shocked.
Re: Nearly all new diesel cars exceed official pollution limits
#5"Unlike other parts of the world, European nations incentivised the use of diesel vehicles over the last 20 years because they emit less carbon dioxide per mile than petrol cars. Governments thought stricter regulation would sharply reduce NOx emissions, but carmakers found ways around the rules and governments failed to clamp down on the practices."
How typical in so many ways (I particularly like the claim that governments "failed" without either suggesting to strip the governments of those powers which they failed to use so consistently throughout all of Europe, or charging government officials with criminal incompetence or fraud.)
Re: Nearly all new diesel cars exceed official pollution limits
#6> There is no suggestion that any of the cars tested broke the law on emissions limits or used any cheat devices. Since all these cars passed the laboratory test, that means there must be something very wrong with the test and the way the standards are enforced. Or all car makers do cheat.
I thought it was common knowledge the lab tests are a joke? Has been posted on HN as well IIRC.
I thought it was more a case of "some car manufacturers cheated" and not "almost all diesel cars emit several times more than they should". How is this possible?
Re: Nearly all new diesel cars exceed official pollution limits
#7> There is no suggestion that any of the cars tested broke the law on emissions limits or used any cheat devices. Since all these cars passed the laboratory test, that means there must be something very wrong with the test and the way the standards are enforced. Or all car makers do cheat.
A bit/lot of it may be "optimize for the test", not cheat. They know at what temperature the test is done, so they optimize the chemistry for that case. They know it will be done with new cars, so they do not optimize "emission over the car's lifetime".
They also have drivers who are above average. That will help with manually shifted cars.
And of course, they pick the best car they can produce, and prepare it optimally. Tyre pressure will be optimized, the car will be perfectly polished, if that helps, etc.
Cheating starts when they tape shut doors to decrease air resistance, or when they explicitly detect "test is being run" and act upon it.
IMO, the real problem is twofold: firstly, the existing tests were designed in such a way that their results do not reflect what happens in the real world, and secondly, some manufacturers went criminally far in optimizing for it.
Re: Nearly all new diesel cars exceed official pollution limits
#8"Unlike other parts of the world, European nations incentivised the use of diesel vehicles over the last 20 years because they emit less carbon dioxide per mile than petrol cars. Governments thought stricter regulation would sharply reduce NOx emissions, but carmakers found ways around the rules and governments failed to clamp down on the practices." How typical in so many ways (I particularly like the claim that gov…
Governments 'failing' in this scenario seems to be referring to not acting quickly enough.
If you're going to strip governments of power for this, there would be no more governments left in the world.
Re: Nearly all new diesel cars exceed official pollution limits
#9"Unlike other parts of the world, European nations incentivised the use of diesel vehicles over the last 20 years because they emit less carbon dioxide per mile than petrol cars. Governments thought stricter regulation would sharply reduce NOx emissions, but carmakers found ways around the rules and governments failed to clamp down on the practices." How typical in so many ways (I particularly like the claim that gov…
Governments 'failing' in this scenario seems to be referring to not acting quickly enough. If you're going to strip governments of power for this, there would be no more governments left in the world.
Not acting quickly enough?.. VW's "defeat device" wasn't uncovered by the government, and it's been deployed for years. I'm not sure what would make governments do anything about this at any future point in time if the issue wasn't reported by a non-government entity. The article also elaborates the measures governments are taking to let perpetrators get away with this into the future (and another source reported how governments keep postponing random checks of cars on actual roads.) There are at least three reasons for governments to side with the perpetrators - campaign contributions or outright bribes to politicians, concerns about the economy/employment, and a revolving door between car makers and regulatory agencies, all this is true for any big business regulated by the government.
The belief that fraud is conducted on this scale but the regulator is not to blame is stunning to me (same with banking fraud etc.) I didn't say governments should necessarily be stripped of this power, just that if they all fail so miserably at something, you ought to either suggest that they cannot ever succeed (and if so of course you'll want to strip them of this power) or that people currently employed by governments to oversee this should be investigated, in the hope that eventually the governments can be trained to find competent people to fill these roles, and find some mechanism that prevents corrupting these people. Meeting extreme government incompetence with complete understanding ("they just didn't act quickly enough") and zero penalties, however, is IMO perpetuating the problem.
Re: Nearly all new diesel cars exceed official pollution limits
#10Ouch, that's gotta hurt: "Surprisingly, the tiny number of models that did not exceed the standard were mostly Volkswagens"