EPA To Overhaul Emissions Testing In the Wake of VW Cheating 203
New submitter kheldan writes with this snippet from The Consumerist: A week after ordering Volkswagen to recall 500,000 vehicles that contain "defeat devices" designed to cheat emissions tests, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it would overhaul its compliance processes to ensure vehicles meet standards not only in controlled environments but in real-world driving conditions, and adds What may be the story-behind-the-story here, are the two Elephants in the Room: One, how many other automakers in the world have been 'gaming' the system like German automakers apparently have been all along, and Two, are these changes to the certification process at the USEPA going to 'trickle down' to the state and local levels, affecting routine emissions testing of individual vehicles? Questions peripheral to these may include: How much is this going to affect new vehicle prices in the future, and how much is this going to affect the fair market value of used vehicles?
Cheating more of an issue for diesels (Score:5, Interesting)
First let me say that this change is urgently needed.
But, it's unlikely that automakers who build gasoline cars are cheating like VW did. It's especially difficult to clean NOx from diesel engine exhaust because unlike gasoline engines, the exhaust contains lots of extra oxygen. Diesels need special NOx-cleaning devices which add cost and weight, and can seriously limit performance in some situations. Gasoline engines just need minor modifications to the engine computer software and the catalytic converter to clean NOx, so there's very little need to cheat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.google.com/patents/... [google.com]
VW Diesel's do have low polluting exhaust ... (Score:5, Informative)
It's especially difficult to clean NOx from diesel engine exhaust because unlike gasoline engines, the exhaust contains lots of extra oxygen. Diesels need special NOx-cleaning devices which add cost and weight, and can seriously limit performance in some situations.
No. It is no longer especially difficult because VW and other diesel makers have already solved this problem. Every cheating VW diesel on the road can have low polluting exhaust. The hardware and software is there, already installed and operating. That is how they pass emissions tests, the software enables all the emissions controls. How the software cheats is to turn off the emission controls if it looks like someone is actually driving.
The fix is a simple software patch to stop turning off the emissions controls.
The downside is that performance and mileage will be reduced.
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How the software cheats is to turn off the emission controls if it looks like someone is actually driving.
Does that mean "wheels spinning" as opposed to just "engine revving"?
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How the software cheats is to turn off the emission controls if it looks like someone is actually driving.
Does that mean "wheels spinning" as opposed to just "engine revving"?
Not necessarily. It could mean looking for driver inputs. Steering wheel, accelerator pedal, brake pedal, etc. Things characteristic of actually being on the road.
Re:VW Diesel's do have low polluting exhaust ... (Score:5, Informative)
It's very clever (but evil): EPA says the software looks at a variety of factors, including wheel speed, steering wheel position, engine run time, and barometric pressure (!), and compares those data against EPA's published testing guidelines.
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including wheel speed, ... and compares those data against EPA's published testing guidelines.
Wow. That's not some "minor misfeature"....
Re:VW Diesel's do have low polluting exhaust ... (Score:5, Funny)
No, even when breaking the law, German engineering does not screw around.
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even when breaking the law, German engineering does not screw around.
Good thing! Made it easy to catch them in 1945, and will also do so 70 years later...
Re: VW Diesel's do have low polluting exhaust ... (Score:5, Informative)
I see this a lot: "hey, they passed the EPA's test, so they're technically not in violation."
Unfortunately, the EPA regs also state that you may not include devices designed to defeat EPA testing. See the EPA complaint [epa.gov] for details.
Opposite is true (Score:2)
the EPA regs also state that you may not include devices designed to defeat EPA testing
They don't - the device is included to pass, not defeat.
Also what really is "the device", because the thing that passes is the same "device" that would not pass.
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Read the EPA complaint [epa.gov]: it anticipates the "but they passed the test!" argument and goes into great detail about what the "defeat device" is in this context. And in any case, since VW has admitted wrongdoing, hair-splitting is pointless.
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The EPA considers the specific ECU software that deactivates the emissions control system to be a "defeat device", and points out that "device" includes "any element of design", not just physical hardware, according to the definitions in the Clean Air Act.
Read the EPA's complaint. Seriously. It's a master-course in anticipating the arguments of rules-lawyering pedants like you.
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That's the issue that came up during the last diesel "cheating" case. It involved diesel tractor trailers. The truc
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Of course not. It had to be quite advanced to detect the difference between car on a dyno in an emissions test chamber and car on a dyno being performance tested.
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It's very clever (but evil): EPA says the software looks at a variety of factors, including wheel speed, steering wheel position, engine run time, and barometric pressure (!), and compares those data against EPA's published testing guidelines.
This sounds like the required Federal testing for students. The Feds give out the information that children must know, and so the administration teaches the children that information.
70% is passing, 80% of questions are known ahead (Score:2)
This sounds like the required Federal testing for students. The Feds give out the information that children must know, and so the administration teaches the children that information.
Are you familiar with the FAA written exams for private pilots? Passing score is 70% and 80% of the questions are known ahead of time. These questions are from exams from previous years, unchanged, and these exams are available for study and practice. The 20% of questions that are "new", largely old questions with the given numbers changed.
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This sounds like the required Federal testing for students. The Feds give out the information that children must know, and so the administration teaches the children that information.
Are you familiar with the FAA written exams for private pilots? Passing score is 70% and 80% of the questions are known ahead of time. These questions are from exams from previous years, unchanged, and these exams are available for study and practice. The 20% of questions that are "new", largely old questions with the given numbers changed.
Yes, studied past exams and took the test and got a perfect score on the private pilot and then later on the instrument rating. Passed the checkride for Private Pilot first time. Took two tries on the Instrument rating. Turns out studying to the test doesn't correspond to doing well in real world scenarios.
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The easiest method for everyone, electric cars and the EPA can do it's regulating thing at the power station. You know it is coming, want to be a pollution pus hog, then you will be paying a large regulatory cost to do so.
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The easiest method for everyone, electric cars and the EPA can do it's regulating thing at the power station. You know it is coming, want to be a pollution pus hog, then you will be paying a large regulatory cost to do so.
Yeah but... VW wanted to beat Toyota out worldwide. hybrids and electrics have become Toyota's playground, so VW decided to stay with the German companies' playground, diesels. People have been noticing for years that diesels are giving mileage results comparable to hybrids. But VW wanted their diesels to offer no user abrasion greater than a gasoline car; and filling up a tank of urea now and then seemed like something undesirable.
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How the software cheats is to turn off the emission controls if it looks like someone is actually driving.
Does that mean "wheels spinning" as opposed to just "engine revving"?
emissions testing involves a chassis dynamometer with rolling drums for the wheels, doesn't it? And maybe variable loads?
Re:VW Diesel's do have low polluting exhaust ... (Score:5, Informative)
You're right that the technology is installed and works, but the performance and maintenance downsides are severe. I didn't want to make my original post too long to read, but here's more detail to explain.
Most small VWs (Jetta, etc) use a "lean NOx trap" to capture NOx in a zeolite sponge. The zeolite fills up with NOx and needs to be cleaned out periodically (every minute or two, takes a few seconds). During the cleaning cycle, engine power is limited to *20%* of maximum. VW's patent says they wait until the driver eases off on the throttle to do it, but still, that's a huge performance hit and a big incentive to cheat (by not doing the cleaning.)
See patent link in my original post for details (warning: machine-translated from German.)
In VW's larger vehicles (Passat, mostly), the car carries an extra tank full of gallons of urea, which is sprayed into the exhaust to react with the NOx. This reaction needs precise temperature controls (which probably limits engine performance), and the tank is big and heavy. By using less urea than needed, VW can use a smaller lighter tank, which needs to be refilled less often. (VW pays for urea replacement for the first 30,000 miles.)
Re:VW Diesel's do have low polluting exhaust ... (Score:5, Informative)
VW's patented setup sounds far less ideal than the well understood SCR/DEF setup everyone else uses. 20% of max power to burn out the NOx trap? No way in hell would I want that!
The precise temperature controls you allude to for SCR/DEF is hogwash. You've got quite a bit of leeway to get up to temp before the system starts dosing before throwing codes and going into limp mode (think like over an hour of operation). If you didn't, then all of us in places with 4 real seasons would have diesels that wouldn't go anywhere because DEF freezes at about 18 degrees F. Where I live, we can go months with temps lower than that, and it takes time to thaw the DEF so it'll flow.
DEF consumption is 1-3% of fuel consumption. So figure 1-3 gallons of DEF used for every 100 gallons of diesel; that's for the puny little 2 liters in a VW all the way up to the 13L monsters in a Peterbilt... 1-3% of fuel, like clockwork. How many gallons of DEF would be needed to go the oil change interval on a VW TDi? Not many.
Lastly, on DEF, any fool paying stealership prices deserves to get ripped off. Drive to a truck stop and enjoy ISO rated DEF/AdBlue at $2.70 or so a gallon. My last DEF fill cost me a whopping $16 for my truck at just over 6 gallons in ~8k miles.. A 3.0L diesel truck that gets 24-27 MPG in mixed driving. A 2.0L TDi should be able to go 12k+ miles on 5 gallons considering how much less fuel they burn than my truck does.
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Thanks, I was looking for this figure for an article I'm writing on diesel NOx chemistry. Sounds like you've got first-hand experience, but do you have an online source I could cite for that? A service manual or something?
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Most car engines run around that power - it's why car engines are small and powerful compared to many other engines. Think aviation and truck engines - sure those engines are big, but they also run at higher power settings for longer periods of time. Aviation engines especially - they're extremely big for the power. (160 cu. in., or
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Aviation engines especially - they're extremely big for the power. (160 cu. in., or over 5L, and it produces a mere... 140hp?).
Check your conversions again. 5 liters is about 300 cubic inches, as anyone with an old-school V-8 is likely to know. Thus, one or the other of your numbers is off. 160 cubic inches is not a large engine.
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But they *do* also use an AdBlue system on their larger vehicles (notably, the Passat), and the EPA claims they were cheating on the Passat too. Quite frankly, I have no idea why.
Re: VW Diesel's do have low polluting exhaust ... (Score:3)
Re:VW Diesel's do have low polluting exhaust ... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, no. Urea does require hotter temperatures, true, but it surely doesn't impact performance. The way diesel pollution works is that you can either lower compression and combustion through EGR to reduce NOx, but this tends to produce particulates and reduces fuel efficiency. Or you can increase efficiency and run the engine hotter, possibly with more compression, which virtually eliminates particulates, but hotter combustion temperatures increase NOx production.
If anything Urea lets the engine run a lot closer to its more efficient state with more compression and higher temperatures. As you say the urea plus the catalyzing exhaust chamber does add weight. But the biggest problem is the availability of urea (in north America) and the handling of it. Especially in the winter.
We run a machine on the farm with Tier 4I emissions on it, and every year we buy about 800 L of urea. It's about $1 CAD/L. So it does add overall cost, though to put it in perspective, it costs nearly $400 a day in diesel fuel during harvest for the same machine, totaling $800 a day for the two machines. But this engine is also more efficient than previous models, so fuel consumption is lower. We don't run the machine in the winter so we've never had any problems with it gelling, and we've never had the machine derate due to urea problems. In my mind, urea injection is really the only practical way to produce cleaner diesels. This is important with biologically-derived fuels as well, such as biodiesel. The carbon cost of urea production and handling probably makes it a wash in terms of CO2 emissions, despite higher efficiency engines. Urea is made from natural gas reformation.
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Thanks for the info. I'm coming at this from basic chemistry and engineering knowledge and by reading up on the technology and VW's patents, but I don't have first-hand experience with these engines. The big question for me is, "what's the upside for VW?" For the lean NOx trap system, there's an obvious performance hit, but the EPA says VW cheated on its urea-system Passat too, and I can't figure out why. I had guessed the temperature restrictions might be part of it, but if that's not the case I'm left
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Commercial diesel equipment which uses urea as NOx control can use between 1-5% of the volume of diesel fuel in urea solution. In Europe, where urea has been used in trucks for many years, a truck stop will have urea pumps next to the diesel pumps. So that you can fill both tanks simultaneously.
For passenger cars, there is considerable pressure to make the urea a service item, which can be refilled at the 10k mile service interval,
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Yeah, that's been my best guess too. But (10,000 miles / (40 miles/gallon diesel)) * 2% urea/ diesel = 5 gallons urea per service interval. Passat has a 5-gallon [cars.com] urea tank, which is just the right size.
So they're not skimping on size/weight of the tank. The only explanations left that I can see: either the urea system puts some performance limits on the engine that I haven't figured out yet, or else they just want to save some money on urea (since they pay for it for the first 30,000 miles.) But risking
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There really is resistance to urea here in NA. It's seen as a burden by just about everyone and it really does play into consumers' buying decisions. $20 worth of chemical can translate into thousands of dollars in lost sales. Especially in a market dominated by gasoline cars.
It's also entirely possible that in real-world conditions the EPAs regulations are simply unattainable in any acceptable way. Now that the EPA is going to have to move to real-world testing, this could be a good thing to let the gov
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If the "1-3% of fuel use" metric is accurate, then a 10,000 mile service interval on a 40 MPG TDI would require a tank that could hold 2.5-7.5 gallons of urea. That's not too bad.
(Of course, I'd rather have a 5,000 mile service interval -- which you'd need anyway if you run biodiesel, since more of it makes it past the piston rings and pollutes the oil -- and a urea tank half the size.)
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I think the urea cheating may be for reasons of customer acceptability. Commercial diesel equipment which uses urea as NOx control can use between 1-5% of the volume of diesel fuel in urea solution. In Europe, where urea has been used in trucks for many years, a truck stop will have urea pumps next to the diesel pumps. So that you can fill both tanks simultaneously. For passenger cars, there is considerable pressure to make the urea a service item, which can be refilled at the 10k mile service interval, in order to avoid the risk of customer non-acceptance. There is therefore a strong pressure to be as frugal as possible with the urea in order to minimize the size/weight of the urea tank and ensure that it will last the duration of the service interval.
Coming soon: do it yourself kits to extract urea from pee, to go with the biodiesel manufacture kits.
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It decomposes if mixed before burning.
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Because it changes the properties of the diesel. Temp, gelling etc.
Also because burning it in the combustion chamber (the cylinder) does not produce the same effects as injecting it into the exhaust (higher pressures and temps in the cylinder)
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You're right that the technology is installed and works, but the performance and maintenance downsides are severe. I didn't want to make my original post too long to read, but here's more detail to explain.
Most small VWs (Jetta, etc) use a "lean NOx trap" to capture NOx in a zeolite sponge. The zeolite fills up with NOx and needs to be cleaned out periodically (every minute or two, takes a few seconds). During the cleaning cycle, engine power is limited to *20%* of maximum. VW's patent says they wait until the driver eases off on the throttle to do it, but still, that's a huge performance hit and a big incentive to cheat (by not doing the cleaning.)
See patent link in my original post for details (warning: machine-translated from German.)
In VW's larger vehicles (Passat, mostly), the car carries an extra tank full of gallons of urea, which is sprayed into the exhaust to react with the NOx. This reaction needs precise temperature controls (which probably limits engine performance), and the tank is big and heavy. By using less urea than needed, VW can use a smaller lighter tank, which needs to be refilled less often. (VW pays for urea replacement for the first 30,000 miles.)
I have my own idea (patent applied for). The exhaust is captured in a large balloon towed behind the car. At the end of the day, the balloon is connected to a pipe at your house, and the contents and downloaded and treated.
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Just like the radiator.
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VW calls it "AdBlue" and charges $10 a gallon for it, but yeah it's just purified piss.
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It was a joke. Same key ingredient, but actually making it out of urine would be ridiculous, hence the humor. C'mon, keep up.
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Sure, if you want to clog the urea injectors with crystals go for it.
It's usually more expensive to be cheap. :)
May be viable for gasoline engines too (Score:2)
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Point I'm getting at is, the payback is high for diesels, and negligible for gasoline engines. See http://slashdot.org/comments.p... [slashdot.org] for tech details.
Re:Cheating more of an issue for diesels (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Cheating more of an issue for diesels (Score:2)
NOx it's not an issue in gasoline, but CO and CO2 are. And are probably cheated also, for the monster trucks they sell in America. But as it is local industry, audits are softer. And with low taxes on gas, EPA's stance on reducing car emissions is a practical joke.
Your government, reflecting your society, doesn't take the environment seriously; but you are starting to taste climate change in the form of drought, we'll see if that changes.
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First let me say that this change is urgently needed.
But, it's unlikely that automakers who build gasoline cars are cheating like VW did. It's especially difficult to clean NOx from diesel engine exhaust because unlike gasoline engines, the exhaust contains lots of extra oxygen. Diesels need special NOx-cleaning devices which add cost and weight, and can seriously limit performance in some situations. Gasoline engines just need minor modifications to the engine computer software and the catalytic converter to clean NOx, so there's very little need to cheat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.google.com/patents/... [google.com]
Many Diseasels have a NOx cleaning device, it's called Urea Injection. Its a system that adds a Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF) to the Catalytic Converter that reduces pollutants, more specifically it converts NOx into water (H2O) and Nitrogen (N2).
DEF is more commonly know by it's commercial name, AdBlue.
VW is pretty much the only manufacturer not to use urea injection (as it adds cost, complexity and maintenance costs which are considered poison to people tight fisted enough to buy diesel passenger cars)
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First let me say that this change is urgently needed.
But, it's unlikely that automakers who build gasoline cars are cheating like VW did. It's especially difficult to clean NOx from diesel engine exhaust because unlike gasoline engines, the exhaust contains lots of extra oxygen. Diesels need special NOx-cleaning devices which add cost and weight, and can seriously limit performance in some situations. Gasoline engines just need minor modifications to the engine computer software and the catalytic converter to clean NOx, so there's very little need to cheat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] http://www.google.com/patents/... [google.com]
i'm glad you brought this up because I was wondering just today...
is it therefore impossible to use catalytic converters on diesels for the NOx like we do on gasoline cars? Is it because there is more to clean up? Or is it because they don't want to clog up the exhaust?
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See http://slashdot.org/comments.p... [slashdot.org] for tech details.
The story-behind-the-story here (Score:2)
Would they want to know, who wrote the software and who authorized the writing of the software?
Not necessarily "cheating" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not necessarily "cheating" (Score:5, Insightful)
Nor does it require an expansive mea culpa by the CEO of the actual company, his resignation, the firing of several senior executives and setting aside $7B to remediate the affected vehicles.
Perhaps you should get one of those vacant VW posts; sounds like you could have saved them several diesel truckloads of money.
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Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our EPA tests - we did.
But you can't hold a whole auto company responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole automotive industry? And if the whole automotive industry is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our industry in general? I put it to you, Greg - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well,
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I'm not sure if Animal House was much of a hit in Wolfsburg
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He became CEO in 2007, a couple years before the supposed start of the cheating.
Before that, he was COB of Audi.
Somebody had to make the decision and someone had to keep covering it up for years - apparently, if ANY of their cars in the USA failed the emissions test, a group of engineers would be flown in from Germany to "fix" it.
So at least a few managers were in on it, too.
Am I missing something? (Score:2)
Yes, I understand that VW cheated the regulators in terms of emissions. Fair enough. They cheated. They got caught. They should pay the price.
What I don't understand is end users being upset. In my life, I've purchased 5 cars to date (all new). Never has the emissions level of the vehicle been a factor, at any level, in my decision over which vehicle to purchase. Horsepower? Yes, Fuel efficiency? Yes. Cost? Yes. Emissions? Not even on the radar.
What am I missing?
missing : requirements to be sold (Score:2)
The EPA (and some states like California) have requirements that must be met before cars can be sold. So it's not so much an issue that the buyers wouldn't have selected the vehicles because they were more polluting -- it's that the vehicles shouldn't have been available for sale *at* *all*.
And once they fix the problems, then the fuel efficiency will be lower, which is one of the factors that many buyers consider (and you mentioned yourself).
Another issue that I haven't heard discussed if the CAFE standar
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Car owners are upset because they will surely need to have their cars recalled and have the chips replaced, and depending on which way VW makes the tradeoffs, may find that their cars drive badly after replacement or fail inspection after replacement or both. And also that the resale value of their car just plummeted.
The wrong way (Score:2)
Once again, listen carefully. You don't deter/avoid/eliminate malicious behaviour like this by creating more stringent testing methods. What you've here is decided to spend more money to create better compliance testing, in a world where those being tested (car makers) can profit by finding better ways to cheat.
Congrats, you're just going to breed better cheaters.
And it's obvious why: your playbook is public, theirs is not. They know how you're going to test them. You don't know how they are going to ch
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Yeah, it's a total joke that the car companies were able to self-certify their emissions tests.
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Yeah, it's a total joke that the car companies were able to self-certify their emissions tests.
I'm a amazed they didn't claim that a virus had invaded their production systems and was now being installed on all the cars. Maybe blamed North Korea.
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Cool story, brah.
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Re: If the system has been gamed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes you can go after the large car companies. That should be easy. You can never stop people from installing after market equipment that games the system. You will never have a perfect system, so stop being so idealistic. I'd settle for a system that stops the vast majority of abuse.
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Agree. The 1/100k car enthusiast who rips apart his car and replaces all the computers inside isn't really the source of our problems. You might as well outlaw wrenches if you want to stop that sort of thing.
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I imagine many people bought those vehicles because they wanted one that was better for the environment.
Lets see how many people bring their VW in to have the ECU s/w updated. I mean without an EPA threat to brin them in or else. I'll bet that most people will weigh a little higher NOx emmissions against driving a gutless pig and not find time to get it in to the shop.
Add SW update to smog check ... (Score:2)
Lets see how many people bring their VW in to have the ECU s/w updated. I mean without an EPA threat to brin them in or else. I'll bet that most people will weigh a little higher NOx emmissions against driving a gutless pig and not find time to get it in to the shop.
Their state could do it. Want to re-register your vehicle, show us your software update certificate. It could be another checkbox on the smog tests that many states require every year or two for registration.
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That will take a long time to be hacked around.
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Lets see how many people bring their VW in to have the ECU s/w updated
I'll be interested in that myself.
I mean without an EPA threat to brin them in or else
It won't be the EPA directly, it'll be the EPA working through the DMV of every state, at least here in the U.S., and even then it'll probably be relatively indirect like this: The EPA will issue a mandate, state Departments of Motor Vehicles will change the emissions testing requirements for individual vehicles, and when you go to get required emissions testing done, you find your vehicle doesn't pass, and you have to take it to the dealer to get 'updated' so it will pass.
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We bought one because of a long commute (70 miles rountrip), low maintenance (no spark plugs, no valve adjustments, electric power steering) and getting real work 50mpg highway (rated 42hwy).
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Yeah, the problem is they don't want to do that, because it's "unfair" to people who have old, poorly-maintained cars, because supposedly these cars are either "classics" or they're too poor to afford newer cars. Basically, cars past a certain age are "grandfathered".
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Right, but that of course is the problem...
Until we're willing to make those hard choices, this is all just noise...
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No, that is not in fact the problem, because most people can't afford to keep cars of that age on the road at all, so there are so few of them that their pollution amounts to a rounding error.
Re:On the fly/road measurements (Score:4, Interesting)
If we assume the average new car is $20,000 today, it works out to close to $450/month over four years. I don't know too many people with older cars that are having to spend anywhere near that much on maintenance.
Targeting the actual polluters (Score:2)
From that I've read, it's actually a point. A badly maintained junker that's burning a quart of oil every 200 miles can actually pollute, per mile driven, equal to around 1k new cars that are properly compliant. For that matter, operating a push lawnmower for long enough to mow your yard will emit more than your car will all month.
Allowable NOx levels were cut by an order of magnitude last round, and in previous rounds as well.
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Allowable NOx levels were cut by an order of magnitude last round, and in previous rounds as well.
Yes, but the US standards for NOx may be overly strict. Just watched autoline after hours on this...
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I find it interesting that VW was forced to sell its 20% holdings in Susuki (anti trust thingy) for 3.9 billion dollars just hours before VW announced their wrong doing. The price would have been far lower hours later as vw stock price crashed.
Also the CEO of vw had a difficult challenge to his position previously that was due to be up for a board vote next week. He resigned.
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Re:Poor VW (Score:4, Informative)
Just buy a Tesla already
Battery based cars tend to do very poorly in very cold countries.
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Absolute rubbish.
And since when is USA a 'very cold country'.
23% Of New Cars In Norway Now Electric Cars | CleanTechnica [cleantechnica.com]
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So do gas powered engines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The solution is the same, use energy to maintain minimum temperature (which the Tesla does) at the cost of about 33% range.
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So do petro, ethanol, hydrogen, etc vehicles.
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Don't live in a cold country.
That's great, I'll post my paypal and you can deposit 500k so I can change that.
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It will cost less than maintaining the Tesla.
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Just buy a Tesla already
and let them eat cake too.
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While I agree, there are a few exceptions to the rule.
Currently, finding appropriate racks for a rental car is hit-or-miss. So if you live somewhere like Southern California and want to rent a car with ski racks, it can be tough to pull off. It's tough to rent something that will pull a trailer and they'll get really grumpy with you if you consider going off-road.
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A bit more time? Extra days spent charging is not "a bit", particularly if the trip is 300 miles each way. Currently, in nearly any gasoline or diesel car, I would drive 5 hours nonstop and be there.
Or about 50 minutes by air, with the ticket costing you less than the price of the petrol (assuming US cheap airfares are about the same as here). Why would anyone want to drive for half their weekend to get somewhere when you can just fly, and the travel time is just a speedbump?
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Maybe it's time to change the focus of our "progress" away from the machines and towards our social models. No one needs that many cars if we accept that not everyone needs to work anymore.
Show it works first and that people would actually want it. Then show how we're going to get from here to there without a lot of toil.
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How come it takes TWO people working full-time jobs to get a lower standard of living than my parents had in the 1970s with just my Dad working, despite all this "progress" and "productivity" we supposedly have?
Because we decided everyone should have these things, such as education, housing, and health care and then we implemented policies to make those things accessible. Instead, they made them more expensive. Oops.
And notice that the developing world isn't having this trouble.
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Everything you mention is much better today than it was then. Our houses more efficient, our access to educational material is much greater and easier, and our health care capacities have improved many times over. I'm not suggesting this is the cause but I'm suggesting you failed to take that into account. There was no glory yesteryear. You're just lazier and feel more entitled.
So it is lazier to want to have the same style of living that my parents had on one salary working 40 hours a week instead of having a lower standard of living with two adults working 80 hours a week? With insurance eating up 20% of the paycheck and not being able to afford to go to the doctor because it is either pay insurance OR go to the doctor, not both and since not paying insurance is illegal now, I guess we have to pay insurance. Education costs many times what it used to and you are left with cripp
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Health-care and teaching appear much more expensive today because manufactured goods cost much less. If you look at where people are employed and making a good living, from 1960 to today, it quickly becomes obvious that certain sectors, like manufacturing, have became much smaller due to productivity improvements. Other sectors, like teaching and health care have not benefited from the productivity miracle the same extent. Additionally, certain intangible sectors of the economy that have went from non-ex
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Everything you mention is much better today than it was then.
UE education being an obvious counterexample.
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Yet the ones the individuals have to take are related to those. In my state is some % from what the car was designed for. The car is designed to that years particular emissions laws.
My state moved to odbII sensor checking instead of tailpipe checks. Cars before 1997 are exempt from the test for that very reason. The tailpipe test was dead easy to fake out. I knew of two 'inspection shacks' that would fake it out for you for an extra 50.
In mt state, you used to have to get your car tested every year before you could get your tag sticker. The inspection was done at licensed repair facilities. As you can imagine, this ended up costing people lots of money to get their inspection sticker because the outfits that inspected also did the "necessary" work, like changing your windshield wipers, emptying your ashtrays, filling up your windshield wiper fluid, installing new shocks. I actually think the windshield wipers were part of the certificati
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Why do you find it odd? If the exhaust system leaks then not all the emissions will go out of the tailpipe. Tailpipe readings are useless if a large % of the exhaust are slip sliding away through a broken and leaky pipe.