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EPA To Overhaul Emissions Testing In the Wake of VW Cheating
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?
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.
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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.
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.
I know, it might be unpopular, but consider this explanation: what if that mode was designed to be turned on when car detects running in a badly ventilated area like indoors or in a tunnel and such? Just to avoid becoming a health hazard. And nobody realized that such mode would interfere with EPA tests. And VW own testers were simply replicating EPA testing rig to insure that ther testing is the same, while having no clue how engine works. While it is still probable, that someone in VW realized that there is a problem, they kept their mouth shut for various reasons. But generally this explanation does not require any wide conspiracy or anything.