Emissions Scandal Expands: Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Mazda, and Mitsubishi (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Volkswagen has taken some serious heat for deliberately circumventing emissions tests with "defeat devices" in some of their vehicles. While no other cars have been found to use specific devices to fool tests in the same way, we're now learning that many manufacturers still mysteriously perform worse in the real world. Last week, the Guardian revealed that diesel cars from Nissan, Hyundai, Citroen, Fiat, Volvo, and Renault emitted significantly more pollution in realistic driving conditions than the tests supposedly allow. Now, we learn that vehicles from Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Mazda, and Mitsubishi emit substantially more than they should as well. For example: "Mercedes-Benz's diesel cars produced an average of 0.406g/km of NOx on the road, at least 2.2 times more than the official Euro 5 level and five times higher than the Euro 6 level. Honda's diesel cars emitted 0.484g/km of NOx on average, between 2.6 and six times the official levels." This provides clear evidence that the automotive industry is designing its cars to follow the letter of the law (passing tests), but not the spirit (actually reducing pollution).

Comments

Re:Realism

[Registered Coward v2]

Is there some compelling reason why these tests aren't being conducted in realistic conditions in the first place?

Jobs. No government wants to all of a sudden have car manufacturers have to stop making diesels until they can comply and thus or lay off workers or require cash injections to stave off bankruptcy. In auditor, given the fuel cost advantage of diesel over gas the car buying public is likely to be upset. Since politicians neither want to piss off companies or voters they prefer to pretend the problem doesn't exist and delay changes through the beuracratic process know as "Studying the problem to come up with a report" to ensure real changes do not get made while giving the appearance of taking action.