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produce a ton of CO2 during manufacture

We actually measure CO2 emissions in tons, so using it as a superlative here is dicey.

I would not sweat the battery production footprint. It will shrink over time and use more renewable process energy as well. Approximately half of a battery’s emissions come from electricity used in the manufacturing process." By the time a battery gets to 8 years old, much has improved. Currently the battery production footprint is nulled out about 2-3 years in, for average driving needs.

Meanwhile, upstream liquid fuel delivery systems are a pretty mature subject matter without much room for improvement.

We don't even have the Concorde anymore. Airplanes still look, act, and sound the same as in 1969 when the 747 first flew. Cars, houses, clothes, buildings, roads, food, all more or less look the same.

They still look roughly the same because that's a pretty good geometric design. But that doesn't mean they are the same. There have been huge advances in aviation technology over the past 50 years. For example, the average fuel burn of new commercial jets fell 45% between 1968 and 2014. Modern jets have better engines and are made of modern materials (carbon fibre is becoming more and more common). This means cheaper prices and longer distances for direct flights.

Buildings certainly do not look the same. New homes in the '60s were usually 1100 SF or smaller (at least in my area). Compare that to new homes now that are 2000 SF, much more efficient, and have a lot more modern conveniences. Now they're not filled with asbestos and lead paint.

And I could go on and on with food, clothing, and the rest.

Have you not read the news at all in the past two years? There have been extensive reviews by agencies in several countries and they all found that essentially every car manufacturer has been cheating in one way or another. See for example this review by the researcher who first published about the defeat device in the VW EA189.

See the ADAC EcoTest, or this report from T&E for a per-manufacturer comparison.

Not true. And VW did not have "some of the lowest real-world NOx emissions."

They do and this is a widely known fact, confirmed by official inquiries in multiple countries and independent laboratories. Why lie about it?

It is true that, after the VW scandal, investigations revealed that six other car manufacturers used strategies in optimizing their emission controls to lower emission in testing but not in real world conditions.

Only six? Try all of them.

VW deliberately, consciously cheated, in order to make the claim that diesel was "clean" and take over the car market.

Sure. Funny how this strategy worked without people outside of engine development knowing about the defeat device or VW ever publicly claiming the affected engines were any cleaner than comparable competing engines. Or a large fraction of the car-buying public even caring about NOx emissions, for that matter.

(And to avoid paying for the Mercedes emissions-control technology).

Nobody, except for Mercedes uses the Mercedes emissions control technology. Volkswagen and Daimler employ similar emissions controls technologies (EGR, LNTs and SCR), partially developed in-house and partially bought from a number of suppliers who sell components to all of the car industry.

They cheated more, they cheated worse, they cheated more flagrantly, they cheated deliberately.

Why are you lying? What's your interest? Do you get paid to spread nonsense?

I do knot know what GP believes or knows, but one would have to be have been living under a rock for the past one and a half years not to know that the use of defeat devices is very widespread in the industry. Some reports and articles easily found with your favourite search engine:

The emissions test defeat device problem in Europe is not about VW
Dieselgate At GM? Defeat Devices Claimed To Be Found In Opel Cars
Test of Fiat diesel model shows irregular emissions: Bild am Sonntag
Report on France’s Renault emissions probe omitted crucial details
French government ordered to hand over full details of Renault emissions study
PSA Group Raided by French Fraud Office in Emissions Probe
Nissan faces suit over alleged emission fraud
#Dieselgate continues: new cheating techniques
RDW emission test programme - Results of indicative tests for the presence of an unauthorised defeat device
VW, Daimler, Nissan, Mitsubishi, GM: Can We Finally Agree That Dieselgate Is An Industry Problem?
Revealed: nearly all new diesel cars exceed official pollution limits
Many car brands emit more pollution than Volkswagen, report finds

Defeat devices are hardly a recent phenomenon:
How Common Are EPA “Defeat Devices” In The Auto Industry?
Carmaker Cheating on Emissions Almost as Old as Pollution Tests

There are different ways to cheat, too:
`Shameful' Mitsubishi Fraud Risks Pushing Carmaker to Brink
This is the world now: Suzuki also admits to cheating on fuel-economy tests

It's not hard to find more. Pretty much every manufacturer cheats or has cheated in one way or another.

It's not my magic way.

You are the one claiming it.

It's VW's magic way.

Then please, tell me how they do it. And why nobody knows about it even though they are under intense scrutiny since it turned out a previous model had a defeat device. Official enquiries in different countries haven't found the cheat you claim exists. Independent analyses commissioned by environmental groups have not found it. The person who found the defeat device in the EA189 wrote that VW's Euro 6 engines show that common types of defeat devices are not necessary.

The burden of proof lies on you, not on me or anyone else. You make an unlikely claim, so show me the facts.

You do know they admitted to this don't you?

They haven't. You're making that up. They only said that they suspected there could be a defeat device in the EA288, since some of the same people were involved in its development. It later turned out it didn't.

Except that volkswagen gave themsalves a comptitive advantage by a massive amount of lying, and caused a lot of extra pollution.

There was neither extra pollution nor a competetive advantage. The VW Group cars that turned out to be equipped with defeat devices produce an amount of NOx comparable to what comes out of contemporary cars from competing manufacturers and the defeat device did not provide any benefits compared to the tricks employed by other manufacturers. See e.g. this page, written by the person who first identified the defeat device in the VW EA189, or this overview by Transport & Environment.

It were the US regulators that decided VW should take one for the team. Even environment group that filed the initial complaint over VW's defeat device has become irritated by the fact that this has become a crusade against VW instead of one against cheating.

And not just VW. This kind of cheating is extremely common. Many of the tricks are even legal, simply because the regulators did not think of them or because lobbying. This is just what happens when something is taxed based on a certain benchmark number: people find a way to improve that number.

So far, the US government has launched a massive campaign against VW, looting billions of dollars and severely damaging the company's until recently almost spotless reputation. However, there is plenty of evidence that most other car manufacturers, including the 2.5 US domestic majors, have been pulling similar tricks for years. Except from a few stern words from the German transportation minister and a few 'voluntary' recalls, there have been exactly zero consequences. No suits, no fines, no withdrawals, no buybacks, no criminal prosecution, no exaggerated claims from government officials, no media outcry. Nothing.

The other manufacturers seem to get away with it scott-free, even though the cheating is often relatively easy to detect and the NOx emissions are in many cases several times larger than from the VW EA189. The simply continue to deny even after getting caught, or they attempt to cover it up, and government authorities let it pass, or even help covering it up. Meanwhile, they all get to steal sales from the scapegoat, the only manufacturer that actually admitted and recalled the affected vehicles (except in the US, where the authorities are dragging their feet) and, ironically, makes the cars with the lowest real-world NOx emissions.

The anti-VW campaign has nothing to do with the environment and everything with economic interests. The Americans found something and exploited it to the maximum extent in every possible way, just like they did with Toyota's 'sudden unintended acceleration'.

Except that the VW group cars with defeat devices did not actually pollute more than comparable cars (1, 2). They just used a different (illegal) way to pass the test than other manufacturers. The actual emissions in real-world driving are in the same range, with some cars with (as far as we know) completely legal ECU software emitting several times more.

Except that the VW group cars with defeat devices did not actually pollute more than comparable cars (1, 2). They just used a different (illegal) way to pass the test than other manufacturers. The actual emissions in real-world driving are in the same range, with some cars with (as far as we know) completely legal ECU software emitting several times more.

Cratering the resale value of a few million vehicles, along with the stock value of the company, doesn't constitute harm?

That was caused by the response of the American authorities, not by anything VW did.

A corporate citizen deliberately cheating on tests, then covering it up, does not constitute harm?

The GM case is indeed different. GM, unlike VW, clearly made a corporate decision to cheat on tests and tried to cover it up after VW got in trouble. However, it seems GM will get away with it and VW is paying billions and has suffered some reputation damage.

I agree that VW should fix the affected cars and that the people responsible should be prosecuted and VW should cooperate with the legal investigations, but I do not think it is fair to punish VW over what a few employees did without the rest of the company knowing. Moreover, I do not think the way the authorities (mainly in the US) and the media have handled this is proportionate. After all, VW group cars with a defeat device emit less NOx than the average Euro 5 diesel car.

The way this case is handled has very little to do with the environment and a lot with politics.

But nobody ever mentions the actual level - which is pretty damn important because 40 times 1 part per thousand is a lot more significant than 40 times 1 part per trillion.

The actual levels are posted here.

Here's the long and short of it:

Jetta (LNT system):
EPA Limit: 0.043 g/km
EPA Dyno Test (cheat number): 0.022 g/km
WVU Test (actual number): 0.61-1.5 g/km

Passat (SCR/Urea-based system):
EPA Limit: 0.043 g/km
EPA Dyno Test (cheat number): 0.016 g/km
WVU Test (actual number): 0.34-0.67 g/km

These emissions levels are in g/km, which is pollutants over distance (which can probably be converted to time, if you dig around the actual study to find average speeds attained, but I'm supposed to be working right now...so you can try to dig that up on your own :). However, I do not believe that these numbers can be converted into actual pollutant volume (e.g. PPM/PPB/PPT). Perhaps you can scavenge that from the WVU study's raw data. I'd be interested in what you find.

I am also interested in finding is a trend in the NOx regulation in the US. I've dug around a bit, but have not yet found it. E.g. - did the actual NOx levels meet previous standards? Are the current standards that VW had to cheat to get around unrealistic? Beyond this, the wiki article does cite some projections regarding the number of deaths that have been/will be caused by the cheat, but I'd like to have a better perspective than that.

VW's diesels (cheat device affected or otherwise) do not emit more NOx than diesels from most competitors. Hence they neither achieved something that seemed to good to be true, nor did they contribute to additional deaths.

NOx is indeed not without harm, but it is less harmful than other pollutants in automobile exhaust emissions, such as particulate matter, hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide. Moreover, there are nowadays very few places where NOx levels are consistently at levels that cause significant health damage, whereas particulate matter is still a problem almost everywhere in populated areas. Particulates are the leading cause of premature death due to air pollution. While I agree completely that lowering NOx emissions is a useful goal, lowering particulates is much more important. Unfortunately, meeting NOx standards often comes at the cost of increased production of particulates. We must not let the current collective obsession with NOx stand in the way of reducing pollution overall.

I'm more familiar with pollution in cities in Europe, but we've got a good idea of where the NOx comes from, as it can be measured easily from different vehicles. And those measurements show that diesels don't perform nearly as well on the road as they do in the lab (not just VW ones either), whereas the petrol ones do much better http://www.theicct.org/blogs/s...

Yes, it's been so easy to measure that it took years for anyone to realise what VW were doing. In fact, in London most of it comes from about 400,000 exempt large diesel vehicles like buses and trucks so that's one easy win. However, we're not going to suddenly run those on petrol because it's uneconomic and would produce far more emissions by burning through more petrol per volume. Like diesels, petrols aren't nearly as 'clean' as anyone would like them to be, not to mention being less efficient. They are just simply not an answer and the falling oil price scuppers it totally, no matter the propaganda.

I'm afraid after VW none of these studies are really credible in any way.

The measurements show the opposite, with NOx for petrol engines going down and down. There is one area in which what you say is true - direct injection engines produce much more soot than traditional port injection ones, but still much less than a diesel without a DPF.

The simple arithmetic is when you more throughly burn the fuel you get more emissions. That's the way the engine works, and of course they're going to produce less than a diesel without a DPF, which is a downright bizarre thing to qualify that with. Remove the catalytic converter and filters and see what happens in reverse.

This can probably be worked around by tuning the injection system or, worst case, adding a filter to petrol engines too (I think Mercedes has already done this on at least one model), so I don't expect it to be a problem for long.

Once you need to start putting additives in you're sunk. The falling oil price is the nail in the coffin that has prompted a lot of anti-diesel talk, especially in the UK, prompting all sorts of desperate headlines. You're also not going to get more out of it by 'tuning' or anything else. There just isn't anything more to be had from a combustion engine.

Electric cars make "hideously expensive" hybrids look cheap. Combustion engines are hardly "over" - electrics account for a tiny fraction of sales.

Hybrids are not only hellishly complex but they are incredibly expensive to maintain. They're certainly more expensive than a diesel engine. Electric vehicles have far fewer moving parts and simply don't need the oils and lubricants a modern combustion engine does. It's a question of where the future is if people really care about emissions and want something that is efficient whilst being cheap enough to buy and especially maintain and there really isn't any more efficiency to be hammered out of the internal combustion engine. The best you can ever hope for in terms of efficiency for a combustion engine is 40% (being very optimistic) - and that's with a turbo, energy recovery systems and every piece of expensive technology you can throw at it. It really is over.

A diesel engine is also more expensive than a petrol one - if it wasn't for favourable tax rates and emissions rules in Europe they wouldn't be economic except for high mileage drivers. Efficiency isn't the be all and end all - total running costs and emissions are.

In continental Europe where diesel is the same price or less expensive than petrol, which is what it should be as the fuel is cheaper to produce, the maths are quite easy to work out. Even in the UK with higher diesel prices as diesel engines have got more efficient and discarded a lot of their traditional problems (quick warm up being one) the

Investigations (PDF) by the ICCT, the organisation that first discovered the VW TDI emission violations, have already shown that the majority of diesel cars on the road today emit many times more NOx when driving in the real world than during the official test regime, often more than the VW engines this scandal is about. So far, only VW has admitted to cheating, but if all those other manufacturers are not cheating I would really like to know what they are doing instead.

Other manufacturers of diesel engines just sucked it up and licensed the Daimler urea-injection thing, and don't have these problems.

They only started doing that very recently, on Euro 6 models. Most current diesel cars do not use urea injection. They use (cooled) EGR and/or an NOx adsorber (LNT), like in the affected VW models. Since it has already been shown that almost all current diesel cars (even some that use urea injection) emit far more NOx in real-world situations than they do in test conditions, and several manufacturers have been caught doing things similar to VW's "defeat device", I expect a few more manufacturers to get in trouble.

Although only VW has been caught explicitly cheating on tests in recent models, independent research has already shown that almost all current diesel cars exceed NOx emission limits in real-world use. It is very likely that all manufacturers cheat in one way or another. VW was just stupid enough to use the exact same model in jurisdictions with different NOx standards, which raised suspicion, and to do it very clearly and explicitly.

Uhm, no. Several manufacturers use the same technology, or even only EGR (Mazda) for Euro 6 models. Euro 5 and before models rarely if ever had AdBlue systems.

-> it looks like this motors are only a bit off in the laboratory test (they are almost EURO 6 - but not without the cheat)

"Only a little bit off"? They emit 10-40 times as much NOx as they're supposed to (EPA source[PDF warning]). That's not "a little bit", that's "actually a fuckload".

-> EURO 6 from VW is fine (see http://www.theicct.org/nox-con...) as other German manufacturers, but some others have problems.

The linked paper only shows test results from a single VW vehicle. Not enough to say anything about VW's general compliance or lack thereof.

Link to the ICCT study that led to this:

http://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/WVU_LDDV_in-use_ICCT_Report_Final_may2014.pdf

So let me get this straight, you are saying that if we do nothing about climate change, costs are going to increase some unknown amount naturally so we need to artificially increase costs with a known amount to combat it?

How about instead of playing five knuckle shuffle while attempting to funnel more money into the government coffers we instead look at ways to sequester the carbon emissions and perhaps replace them with naturally economically viable solutions?

Apparently we can't do that either because somdumass opposes anything that would "artificially increase costs". Oh wait. You appear to already be opposed to your own solution for the same reason you oppose tariffs. Or maybe you think magic fairies are going to pay for carbon sequestration? The carbon is already sequestered, it's far cheaper to stop burning it than it is to try and re-sequester it after we burn it.

I mean seriously, all the regulations and mandated emissions crap (which is mostly a good idea BTW) on cars has increased the cost of purchasing a new one by about 1/3 from between 1967 and 2001.

Somehow I doubt the veracity of that claim. After searching for a bit I only found one reference to what that amount actually is, and according to the chart that I found on the ICCT site, it's about to $200-400 per gasoline vehicle which is simply not going to be 1/3 of purchase price of any new car.